by Sophia James
* * *
Deflowered? God, he was making a hash of this, talking like a schoolboy in the moments he should have just shut up and got on with it. But there was something in the gentleness of her gift and words that made him...nervous.
This was the first time she had lain with a man and from all he had ever heard women needed it to be special.
Special when all he could think about was pushing deep inside of her and claiming her in that one momentous final moment of elation that made a man weep with the beauty of it.
The velvet-brown in her eyes was soft, understanding, almost gold under the candlelight.
‘Love me, Daniel.’
‘For ever, my love.’
And then it was simple, the tight lines of their bodies together, his hand cupping her bottom and bringing her over the hard rod of his need. An opening slick with wetness and a quiet push within.
He heard her gasp and stopped, slowly, slowly, but for ever onwards until the hilt of him was buried in the warmth of her flesh and against the edge of her womb.
‘Mine.’ He said the word in wonder and watched her take it in, saw the flickering pain on her face change into surprise and then into fire. Felt the waves of her own ecstasy against him, claiming and clenching until he could not know where he ended and Amethyst began, the melded aching orgasm taking them both above thought and reason to a place where nothing existed, save for them.
Suspended there. Without time. Without surroundings. Clinging to desire until the very last tiny echoes had subsided and the world crashed once again into reality.
‘Thank you.’ He could not remember ever saying that to a woman after making love, but all he could feel was gratitude, his seed holding them together and the hollow beat of his heart finally quieting.
Usually he got up straight away, the feeling of intimacy threatening somehow and empty. But here, now, his hand fell against her back and he held her close, her warmth of skin and her legs straddling his.
More. He wanted her again. Wanted to slip in and stay there for ever. His member rose and nudged her thigh and she simply opened her legs and let him enter.
This time it was slower, the slickness allowing an easy entrance, the rise and fall of her breasts against his hands as he took her. His tempo quickened just with the thought.
* * *
She was rushing again to that place she had had no notion of, the high breathless plane of wanton relief. She could feel herself reaching, tipping into him, his shaft within her deep.
She heard herself cry out, guttural and primal, noises that she had never thought to make before, sounds from the very soul of her need.
Again. And again. Boneless and formless. And this time when the final pulses came she dug her nails into his skin and marked him with the loving, long runnels of redness against the brown.
Afterwards she could not move, but lay there across him, still joined, still feeling the heaviness of him within her, and then she slept.
* * *
Birdsong woke him, the twelve-hour candles burned towards the end of their usefulness, the drips of wax across the holders opaquely white and twisted.
Daniel breathed out and watched the last of the night turn into dawn, streaked with the pink of a new day. The sounds of the house were quiet. The swish of an early maid’s skirts as she walked the passageway, the creak of timber shedding off the cold of night, the creeping plant outside his window, its greened tendrils knocking against the glass.
All the sounds he had heard for all of the years of his life. And now there was a new one. Amethyst’s quiet breathing, her eyelashes long against her cheeks.
His bride. His wife. His lover now, her body claimed as his own.
Would there be a child? Would this night bring the fruit of conception and the promise of another generation of Wyldes born into the lineage of Montcliffe?
If it was a boy, they could call him Nigel and this time he would get it right. If it was a girl, he hoped that they might find a name of a gemstone as Robert and Susannah had and then he could also call his daughter ‘my jewel’.
‘What are you thinking?’ Amethyst’s voice was soft with the morning.
‘Of you and of us and our future. I’d like children...’
She pushed herself up at that and her hand went beneath the covers, across his chest and then his stomach to the budding hardness of his flesh.
‘So would I.’
‘Now?’ He could see in her face the languid hope of sex.
Turning over, he brought her beneath him, covering her smallness with his body and finding the very centre of her with his fingers before once again entering in.
* * *
When she awoke next he was not there, the day without showing a full sun and a cloudless sky.
Her eyes went to the clock on the mantel. Almost one o’clock. Looking around, she saw piles of books and an old piano she had not noticed yesterday. A globe and guns stacked on small shelves completed the tableau beside it.
A man’s room, nothing feminine within it, save for her tangled in the sheets and naked, her thighs tight with his seed and her nipples tender from his kissing.
Like a child she had held him there, his hair dark against the white of her skin. Her hand fell across her thigh and inwards, the throb of delight still present under a different ache. She smiled. Not like the animals in the barnyard after all. The slight tip of her hips brought the feeling back and she reached for a momentary echo, pushing down on the bone of her groin, guided by some ancient knowledge.
Daniel Wylde had healed her and made her whole. He had taken all the doubts and turned them into certainty; the sureness of being loved and of loving back as well.
A gift of place and of beauty, the heart and body and soul kind of love her parents had known and of which the great stories told.
Her story now. No longer blinded by shame. Her fingers traced the mark on her thigh and she remembered his mouth there. Not ugly. Not unsightly.
But beautiful.
He had called her that so many times over so many hours and in the sunshine of a new day she finally felt it.
* * *
She came downstairs much later, having bathed and washed her hair and tidied up the scramble of sheets upon the master bed. She felt different, the soreness in her private places only adding to the illusion. She felt wanton too, her mind going to the hours between now and when they could again be in each other, feeling the heat of their loving.
Only the Earl was in attendance at the table.
‘Your father and Julia have been journeying around the countryside all day and have sent word that they will be down in an hour or so. Perhaps we might look over the garden before we eat as it will be a while before it is served.
Hope soared. ‘I would like that.’
Outside the courtyard was empty. Leading her around a corner under the overhang of stone, he found a position that shielded them from any unsuspecting servant who might be walking the paths.
He was kissing her before she even turned, hard desperate kisses that spoke of all the frenzy she herself felt, and when they came up for breath he held her closely against him.
‘Will there ever be a time when I see you without wanting you?’
She laughed. ‘I hope not.’ Her finger traced the line of his lips.
‘If you keep doing that we won’t be having any dinner.’ The smile in his words was as obvious as the need in his eyes. ‘Would you like to see how Deimos is faring? John has been asking after you, too. I think you have earned his respect as a healer, Amethyst, which, believe me, is a hard thing to do.’
‘He has been here at Montcliffe for a long time, then?’ she asked him as they walked.
‘Since I was a boy. It was John who taught me a lot of the tricks of the trade. His own father was the stablemaster at Montcliffe before him and his father’s father before that.’
‘History,’ she said quietly. ‘That is what I love about this place. I have never been so much a p
art of what has come before.’
‘Or after,’ he said and brought her fingers to his lips. ‘I’d like lots of children to see Montcliffe prosper.’
‘Then let us try again for the first after dinner,’ she whispered and laughed as he turned towards the stables.
* * *
Her father and Julia were both waiting in the small salon next to the dining room when they returned and it seemed to Amethyst that her world had rolled over into something different. Papa looked the happiest she had ever seen him and her own heart sang with the promise of life. The doctor had been right after all: hope was the best medicine for any ailment. She knew he was not cured, but he was definitely happy.
‘We have some wonderful news to give you—’ Robert’s voice was light ‘—and I have had wine sent up from London to celebrate it with.’ He gestured to the bottles in front of him with the four fluted glasses standing beside them. ‘Julia has done me the honour of agreeing to become my wife and I have signed the deeds today on a house not far from here in which we intend to live.’
‘I hope you will give us your blessing, Amethyst? I realise it might seem a sudden thing, but sometimes one just knows.’ Julia’s voice was soft. ‘I swear I shall make it my goal in life to keep your father healthy.’
Sometimes one just knows.
Reaching for Daniel’s hand, Amethyst understood exactly what Julia was referring to as his fingers tightened about her own.
‘I would be delighted to welcome you to the family, Julia, as I haven’t seen Papa smile so much in years.’
As the wine was poured Robert handed them all a glass. ‘I would like to make a toast, then, to for ever. For us all.’
* * *
Much later they lay together in the main chamber, the time well after one in the morning.
‘I love you more than life itself, my Amethyst,’ Daniel said into the darkness and the sound of it curled into his heart. ‘And I am glad that you waited for me.’
She smiled. ‘Gerald finally did me a favour.’ Her words were soft against his chest. ‘If he had been a better man, I might not have met you.’
‘He is dead. He will never hurt us again.’
‘And the others. The ones who tampered with our carriage on the road to Leicester?’
‘They will not harm us either, I promise.’ He tried to keep the anger from the edge of his words.
‘Papa was right to choose you as our saviour. He would not have managed to scare them away all by himself.’
‘Your father is an amazing man. I think he would do almost anything for love and he’s a lot stronger than he looks.’
‘Perhaps with Julia’s care he can confound all the doctors, though there will come a day when...’ She did not go on.
‘If we have a boy first, let’s name him Robert.’ Nigel could wait, Daniel thought, but for Amethyst’s father time was fading and the sheer bravery of the older man had never ceased to amaze him. He hoped he could be half the father to his own children as the old timber merchant had been to Amethyst.
‘Perhaps when Gwen comes to visit us we might have my grandfather here as well. A change in scenery would do him good and a time away from my mother might be just the thing he needs,’ he suggested.
‘I’d like that. We could take him to visit my father and show him the horses and...’
She stopped talking when he kissed her.
He had no wish at all to return to society, but resolved to make his life here, amongst the green hills and valleys of Montcliffe. Tracing a pattern across the freckles on his wife’s shoulders, Daniel began to tell her of Nigel.
The last secrets were almost the hardest, but he had to let her know of the man his brother had been and of the death that he had chosen.
‘He left a note for me with my grandfather and it was not at all what I was expecting. I think he was depressed.’
The night closed about them as he spoke and the shame of suicide lessened under her quiet and gentle acceptance.
Epilogue
Daniel sat with Robert and Lucien in the small sitting chamber off the main bedroom, his eyes glancing at the clock every few minutes.
‘We should have gone to London for the birth.’ He had told Amethyst this again and again, but she would not listen. Standing, he walked to the window and looked outside.
Oh, God, please let my wife and child be safe.
The refrain had been his mantra for weeks and weeks, words that rolled around in his mind first thing in the morning and last thing at night. He had tried to keep his fear from showing, but he had been sleeping badly for months now and the dreams he did have, if he was lucky to slumber, seemed to mirror his every anxiety. If anything happened to Amethyst, he would want to be dead too. If she died, then he would want to follow, in his heart and his soul and his body
‘Susannah used to say that giving birth was a woman’s glory and her triumph for being feminine.’
At this moment Robert’s sentiments were the last things Daniel wanted to hear. Glory. Triumph. There were so many other words more apt to use as the cries of his labouring wife had fallen down into whimpers.
This was when they died. When their energy was spent and their blood was thin and the will to live waned under constant pain. God, how much practice had he had in that on the battlefields?
But he was a man and strong and fit while she...
A single shout had him at the door before anyone could stop him and he was through into the master chamber, ignoring the protests of Julia, Christine Howard and the midwife.
Amethyst’s forehead was slick with sweat when he reached her and the red blush of blood on the sheets beneath was telling.
‘Dr MacKenzie will be here soon, my love.’
She gripped his hand.
‘I cannot do this without you, Daniel. Please, I want you here...’
He looked around the room, the pale face of Julia and the flushed one of Christine. Only the midwife looked unconcerned.
The midwife had all the herbs and candles his wife had instructed her to bring, but still it did not seem to be enough. Fear rushed in like the enemy and he made himself breathe through it.
For so many battles and for so many years he had found in himself the strength to forsake dread and fight, yet in the end this was the most important battle of them all.
He turned to his wife and smiled, hoping that the glory and triumph of which Robert had spoken just a few moments past was there on his face to see.
‘This baby needs to come, my darling, and together we can help it arrive.’
Her fingers entwined around his own and she nodded. ‘It won’t be long,’ she said quietly and then stiffened, her hand squeezing his in a grip that was surprising.
* * *
An hour and a half later Amethyst sat changed and washed, her hair arranged in two short thick plaits by Christine, and the swaddled baby at her breast.
‘You did it, Amethyst,’ Lucien’s sister gushed. ‘Sapphire is the most beautiful child I have ever seen.’
With a fuzz of blonde covering her head and pale brown eyes Daniel could not help but agree. Her grandfather had his own way of showing relief as he wiped the tears from his eyes.
‘Sapphire Susannah Wylde. Your mother would have been pleased.’ Robert’s voice quivered with the poignancy of memory.
Lucien stood back from the frivolity, the birthing room and a small baby well out of his realm of comfort, but he took a box from his pocket and presented it to Amethyst.
‘This comes from my own estate. A moonstone for June and new beginnings. Appropriate, I think.’
The bracelet was entwined in white gold and pearls, an expensive treasure that Daniel knew Lucien could ill afford to give, but his wife’s smile when she saw it was priceless.
‘Sapphire’s second piece of jewellery,’ she said and held the gemstone up to the light, ‘for Daniel found a tiny bejewelled cap this morning amongst the Montcliffe treasures.’ The crystalline structures within the moonsto
ne made it shimmer with every shade of the rainbow, prisms of light filling the room.
And for Daniel the moonstone was exactly what his life now reminded him of. Full, joyous, colourful and rich.
Rich in people and in structure, and in laughter and memories. Rich in place and belonging and happiness. The true riches, he thought, are the ones never imagined.
When Amethyst took his hand in her own he looked down and smiled.
He was home, at last, and at peace with his two most precious jewels. Home in the belonging of family.
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from BRIDE FOR A KNIGHT by Margaret Moore.
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Chapter One
England, 1214
Surrounded by wooden chests packed with dower goods, two young women faced each other in the chamber they once shared. One was dark-haired and dressed in soft, doe-brown wool. The other, fair and lovely, wore her finest gown of green silk, for this was her wedding day.
“You don’t have to marry him, Mavis,” Tamsin said to her beloved cousin. “Whatever your father’s told you, or however he’s threatened you, you have the right to refuse. Neither he, nor the church, nor the law can force you to marry against your will. Rheged and I will be happy to offer you sanctuary or take you anywhere—”
“No, please, that won’t be necessary,” Mavis interrupted, smiling as she shook her head. Tamsin hadn’t been in the solar when her father had proposed the marriage between his daughter and Sir Roland of Dunborough. Because she had, Mavis spoke with confidence. “I gave my consent to marry freely, Tamsin, and was pleased to do so. I think you’re wrong about Sir Roland. I know what his father and brother were like, but he’s not the same.”