His warm breath gusted past her ear. She lifted her head, held his eyes in a long, steady look and smiled. She would take her time.
His brows lifted in a question, then his mouth quirked into a grin. She leaned back against his bent knees and felt his shaft sink deep inside her. Closing her eyes at the delicious sensation, she rocked forwards until her nipples grazed his chest.
She loosened her hair and spread the dark, silky curtain over his face and chest. Listening to his heart pound, she matched his breathing, matched the rhythm of his hands circling over her breasts with the measured thrusting of her hips. His rigid member filled her, slid in and out of her slick, wet entrance as she stretched and twisted above him.
She edged towards her release, and sharp, savage joy pierced her. Panting, she worked to bring Reynaud with her, taking him more slowly, more deeply than before. Flame licked her, and she exploded. Reynaud clasped her close, his own climax jerking his body in uncontrollable shudders.
Oh! Loving was fierce and honest, the body breaking into flower on a rack of fire.
But she knew there would be a price.
Count Henri rose and grasped Reynaud’s hand, his face alight. ‘Welcome, my boy, welcome! We have missed you these few weeks. And how I have missed the sound of Leonor’s harp.’
Reynaud hesitated. ‘She did not bring her harp with her.’
The count’s bushy eyebrows rose. ‘Not brought—But why?’
The older man’s keen blue eyes studied Reynaud, took in his dusty, travel-stained tunic. ‘Ah, I see. You travelled quickly.’
‘My lord, I bring sad news. I—’ He took a step towards the thin, proud man. He must speak now, before someone else arrived from Carcassonne with tales of Bernard de Rodez’s death.
The count eyed him calmly, his gaze unflinching. ‘Speak, then.’
Gently Reynaud urged the older man to resume his seat. Then he knelt before him, looked directly into the lined face, and lifted the old man’s shaking hands in both of his. ‘I would to God I could spare you this, Henri, but I cannot. Your son, Bernard de Rodez, is dead.’
The count’s mild blue eyes glazed. His mouth twisted, but no sound escaped his lips. At last he drew a wheezy breath.
‘How? In the tourney? I knew of the tourney, of course,’ he said with a weary sigh. ‘Ever does my brother Roger relish his tourneys.’
Reynaud’s heart stuttered. ‘It was not in the tourney. I fought him, it is true, but in hand-to-hand combat to save Leonor.’
‘Leonor?’ The blood drained from Henri’s cheeks. ‘What mischief had Bernard wrought this time?’
Reynaud hesitated. ‘He accosted Leonor. Swords were drawn. I—I had to strike, lest he harm her.’
The count nodded, listening.
‘De Rodez had slandered her. I fought to clear her of the charge. I am sorry, Henri. It was I who killed him.’ There was no need to tell the old man more.
For some time the Count did not speak. Then, his voice distant, he said, ‘In a way I am not surprised. The boy was a strange one from the first moment he drew breath. But he was my only son. Heir to my name and all that I hold.’
‘Henri,’ Reynaud murmured. ‘I wish I had not done it.’ He resisted the impulse to pull the trembling man into his arms.
The count swallowed hard. ‘Tell me the rest.’
‘Your brother, Count Roger, helped us escape.’ Reynaud bowed his head before the count. ‘I wanted to tell you of the deed myself, knowing how it would pain you.’
Count Henri withdrew one hand from Reynaud’s grasp. Reaching out, he ruffled Reynaud’s hair. ‘Grieve not, man,’ he said, his voice shaking. ‘I knew long ago my son would not live to old age. He was…rash. Greedy. Someone would have killed him, sooner or later. I am sorry it had to be you.’
Reynaud blinked back tears at the resignation in the older man’s voice. His chest ached with remorse and with something else, as well. The gentle pressure of the count’s hand on his head touched him deeply. How he had longed for such a gesture when he was a boy. His foster father, Hakim, had been harsh in parenting. Only his uncle, Hassam, had ever shown approval of him.
His chest constricted. While he was here at Moyanne, awaiting new orders from his Templar Grand Master, he would ease Count Henri’s burden as best he could. And then…
He closed his eyes for a brief moment. Then, God willing, he must take his leave of Leonor and resume his life as a knight of the Temple.
The count rose and laid one veined hand on Reynaud’s shoulder. ‘Alais and I will expect you at supper tonight. From the look of you, we could both use some strong Gascony wine, could we not?’
Three hours later, Reynaud smiled down into his cup of unwatered wine, listening for the third time in as many hours to the count’s wife, Alais, sing the praises of her wolfhound’s litter of pups. The woman seemed besotted with the bitch’s offspring. One would think she, and not the hound, was the mother.
‘Alais hungers still for young ones,’ Count Henri murmured at his elbow. ‘Even more, now that my son…’
He left the thought unfinished. Reynaud’s heart wrenched at the far-away look in the older man’s eyes. He drained his cup and signalled the wine bearer.
‘Thank you, my boy. Thank you,’ the count breathed. ‘I rarely imbibe so late of an evening, but tonight it seems…needful.’
Reynaud touched his pewter cup to the count’s jewel-studded goblet. ‘I will join you, then.’ Anything to take his mind off Leonor, seated only tantalising inches away from him at the high table. She picked at her food without uttering a word, listening to Lady Alais talk of weaning her pups.
Her presence, the elusive spicy fragrance of her hair, the memory of her soft warmth beside him made him ache with wanting. He would not be with her this night, would not take her in the sweet, heated silence of loving. She would lie alone in her chamber and he—
He would pace the castle ramparts until dawn.
Count Henri leaned towards him. ‘Drink up, man. It heals the soul.’
Reynaud gave a short laugh. Does it, indeed? He could dull his body’s craving with wine, but it would not ease the emptiness inside him. The thought of life without Leonor made everything seem grey and drab.
Perhaps Henri was right. He would have more wine. A great deal more wine. At least he could keep the count company.
Henri’s filmy blue eyes followed his wife’s progress as she circled the room with the dancers. ‘Alais is a good wife,’ he confided, his voice low. ‘Always has been.’
Reynaud murmured an assent. He could not keep his eyes off Leonor, dressed in pale yellow silk, her hair bound up with gold cord and covered with a gauzy veil. Her smile made the hunger in his heart unbearable.
What they had known these past few days was all they would ever have. Eventually she would marry. He clenched his jaw at the thought of his Leonor in another man’s arms. Dragging his gaze away, he focused instead on tiny, plump Lady Alais, moving with the circle of dancers.
‘Women,’ the count mused. ‘So different, yet so much the same under the skin.’
Reynaud grunted.
‘I never did come to love Bernard’s mother,’ Henri continued, in an undertone. ‘I thought I would in time, but it was not to be. I missed her, though, when the fever took her. And,’ he added in a tone well covered by the sound of rebec and pipe, ‘that spring, when I travelled from Navarre to Aragon to visit Leonor’s grandfather, I fell in love for the first time.’
Reynaud shifted in his seat. He did not want to talk of love—the count’s or anyone else’s. Not when Leonor was so near and yet so far from him in possibility that he could not trust himself even to touch her hand. He managed a nod, then drained his wine cup.
‘From the beginning it was not an appropriate match,’ Henry sighed. ‘I was much older, and still in mourning for my wife, and she was but a serving maid. Yet the girl loved me, I think. She comforted me much that spring, put my loneliness to flight as only a woman can. She was a virgin
when I took her,’ he confided in a whisper. ‘Ah, what a golden time it was.’
Reynaud tipped his chair back. ‘You were fortunate.’ His voice shook.
‘I was,’ the count acknowledged. ‘Were it not for my heritage, I would have married her. But, as it was, I bore the obligations of my station and wed another.’ He tipped his head towards Alais, now leading the circle of women in a spirited dance.
‘But I never forgot that sweet maid, nor all the times of our loving when she came to me.’
‘Do you think of her still?’ Reynaud inquired in a gentle voice.
‘Aye, still.’ The old count exhaled in a long sigh. ‘Have you never loved a woman?’
Reynaud’s gut clenched. He took a deep breath and met Count Henri’s steady gaze. ‘I am bastard born, my lord. And a Templar. I have not the right to love a woman.’
‘Eh bien. How was it you were raised by an Arab family in Granada?’
‘My foster-aunt brought me newborn to the house of Hakim in a reed basket. I was raised by foster-parents—Leonor’s Arab uncle.’
Count Henri stared at him. With an effort he brought his lips together. ‘Such marriages are rare, but not unknown. Ah, then you are not half-Arab, as I had thought.’
Reynaud pressed the older man’s hand. ‘I am not. Would to God I knew my heritage, but I do not.’ He rose and strode from the hall.
Alone on the parapet wall, he sucked in great gulps of the soft night air and struggled to sort out his own thoughts. He liked Count Henri, admired the gentle authority with which he administered his demesne, even envied him his wife, the Lady Alais. Were he to choose a man to revere other than his Uncle Hassam, he could choose none better than Henri, Count of Moyanne.
But one could not choose one’s father. Pain lanced his chest. He had never fit anywhere, was always on the outside. Heritage, lineage were all a man had in this life, save for exploits in battle, feats of arms that gained fame and perhaps some fortune.
But now he knew that such things alone were not enough. Worldly success did not define a man’s worth. He gripped the rough stone ledge until his knuckles ached and turned his face up to the sky where a blush of peach foretold another dawn. Something inside him started to crumble.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Leonor jolted from an exhausted sleep and dragged her heavy limbs from the narrow bed to peer out the casement. In the courtyard below hooves clattered and men shouted. What now?
The coppery sun beat down on a courtyard milling with people. Travellers, by the look of them. A knight and his lady, accompanied by a cowled monk and one—no, two clerics. Plus an entire retinue of knights and men-at-arms. She noted with relief that all wore the scarlet-and-black colours of Carcassonne, not the blue and gold of Toulouse. Count Roger and Jannet…It had to be!
And there, just emerging through the inner gate, a tall figure in dark robes, riding a mule.
Benjamin! Hurriedly she pulled on her chemise, donned the first gown she laid her hand on and flew down the stone stairway in her bare feet.
‘Benjamin!’
‘Leonora, regalada!’ The old man slipped from the mule and clasped her close. ‘Thank God you are safe. I died a thousand deaths each day when we found no trace of you and Reynaud. But then no doubt you followed an untravelled road?’
‘We did,’ she murmured. How ‘untravelled’ her old tutor would never know, though by the soft look in his black eyes he had guessed.
‘Kerida,’ Benjamin said after a long look into her face. ‘I am a tired man. I would sell my soul for a bath and a pallet near the kitchen.’
Sell my soul… She had not yet sought out the priest to confess her sins of the past four days!
Strange, but she felt not the least bit sinful. No matter what the teaching of Holy Writ, learned by heart before she could read, she could not feel there was sin in loving Reynaud, nor in coupling with him.
Reynaud did not appear until supper. He seated himself next to her, but said nothing.
‘You missed the mass spoken for Henri’s son,’ she observed, taking care that the clank of knives and platters covered her words.
‘I did not sleep last night,’ he replied. ‘I rode into the woods to…think.’ She watched his fingers clench and unclench around the handle of his eating knife. So fine and slim they were. Lover’s hands.
Her breath caught. ‘I, too, slept little,’ she whispered. ‘It is difficult without you.’
His shoulders stiffened. ‘Not merely difficult, Lea. It is agony.’
After that, they gave up any show of making conversation. It was enough at this moment to feel his warmth beside her.
Or almost enough. She longed to curl herself against his hard muscled chest and share the day’s events. Her skin burned with wanting him, but she dared not even touch his hand.
Think of other things!
‘That monk,’ she began after Reynaud replenished her wine cup. ‘The strange one who rode from Carcassonne with Benjamin?’
Reynaud sipped from his cup, his eyes resting on hers. ‘Monk?’
‘That one.’ She gestured down the table with her knife. ‘Near the end.’
His gaze travelled from face to face along the length of the table. When his pupils widened, Leonor knew he had found the man.
‘No monk that,’ he muttered.
She stared at him. ‘He spoke the mass today for Henri’s son. Surely he is not an imposter?’
Reynaud’s lips compressed into a thin smile. ‘Not in the way you think, but an imposter none the less. More than that I cannot say, even to you.’
‘But—’
‘There is a reason why such a one comes in disguise, Lea. Chances are I will know of it before the night ends.’
He returned his gaze to the platter of roast venison before them and with a decisive motion pierced a slice of the meat with his knife. ‘Only one thing am I certain of,’ he murmured as he cut the meat into two portions and lifted one on to her plate.
An icy hand clenched her stomach. ‘And that is?’
‘This time, you will not come with me.’
She kept her voice steady. ‘That I know, Rey.’
‘And another thing I am certain of,’ he breathed. He turned his head towards her and held her gaze. ‘I love you,’ he whispered. ‘Only you.’
Her heart caught. ‘That also do I know.’
She touched his hand, then knotted her fingers in her lap to keep from touching him again. Reynaud laid one warm palm over her balled fist and squeezed hard. ‘Drink some wine, Lea. It is unwatered, as is mine. It dulls the edge of wanting.’
She nodded and reached for her wine cup, her lids stinging.
The monk’s penetrating brown eyes met Reynaud’s. Purposefully the man inclined his head and fingered the metal cross at his breast, and a jolt of unease stabbed below Reynaud’s heart. When was a call to duty so subtly given?
Count Henri rose to introduce Brother Pierre, and then he knew his remaining time in Moyanne was short.
He dropped his gaze before the prelate’s intent look and reached for Leonor’s hand, still fisted in her lap. Not yet would he leave her. He would savour these last moments as long as he could. He would have the rest of his life to remember them.
God’s eyes, he was weary in spirit, torn between duty to the Templars and his love for Leonor. His chest ached. His head pounded with each beat of his heart. But his soul ached most of all, and it ached for Leonor.
The monk rose and advanced towards the dais, drew back his cowl and turned his pale, angular face on the assembled company.
‘It is not “Brother” Pierre, my lord Henri, but Bishop Pierre, of Chalons. I am spokesman for Pope Alexander in Rome, and I come on a matter of some urgency.’ He lifted one veined hand. ‘If I may speak?’
‘Speak, speak,’ echoed through the hall. Count Henri waved him forwards, and the bishop stepped to the dais and turned to face the hushed hall. His sharp eyes scanned the crowd, waiting until the silence hammered aga
inst the stone walls, then he lifted his paper-thin voice.
‘The Holy Church calls for a new crusade against the infidel. A Frankish crusade.’ He let the murmurs die away before he continued. With every word, his voice grew more strident.
‘Each passing day the threat of conquest and death draws ever closer to your doorstep. We must attack the foes of Christ and His Holy Church, must wrest the Christian lands from the Saracen without delay.’
Reynaud went rigid. He saw what the old fox was up to. Louis of France and the Christian kings of Aragon and Castile wanted to attack not Jerusalem, but Spain. It was not a crusade to free a holy city, but military aggression to gain lands. A war to drive out the Arabs who had dominated Al-Andalus for five hundred years. This was simply papal chicanery.
Reynaud’s belly roiled. In the next instant he found himself on his feet. ‘It is to Jerusalem that Christian warriors should journey, not to Spain. The Saracen threat is a tale carried by troubadours. They struggle among themselves to hold on to what they have, and trouble us not.’
Bishop Pierre turned expressionless eyes on him. ‘Ah, Reynaud. I wondered when we should meet again. I bear a message for you. From your Grand Master, Bertrand de Blanquefort.’
Reynaud murmured a silent prayer. He could guess the content.
He cleared his throat. ‘My lord bishop, it is well known that Aragon holds lands in Gascony and Navarre. Would Louis of France march against his brother Christians in search of conquest?’
The bishop’s sharp eyes hardened. ‘It is principle, not land, that is in question here.’
‘What principle, my lord?’ Reynaud challenged.
The prelate jerked. ‘Lands in a Christian kingdom cannot be held by unbelievers. Infidels.’
‘The Saracens are not “unbelievers”,’ Reynaud said quietly. ‘They simply follow their own holy book, which is different from ours. To the Arabs, we are the infidel.’
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