They reached the main floor and the object of their discussions stood waiting for them. They shared a glance between them and when he glared at both of them, they laughed. Brice joined them at table as they made plans for the rest of the day, as well as the three more that Lord Giles would be away.
It was during that meal that Fayth discovered another of her husband’s secrets—one he and Brice shared and both tried to hide. So obvious to her now, she wondered how she had missed it before. And wondered whether or not to reveal her knowledge of it to him.
Neither her husband nor his friend could read.
Though not a terrible lack, for many noble Saxons could not read or write, to them it was surely another mark of their illegitimacy and another quality found lacking.
Fayth stored away that bit of knowledge, not certain where or when it would be of the most use to her.
Chapter Twelve
T he door opened quietly as it always did when her husband tried to enter their chambers softly. Fayth sat in the tall chair, with only a few candles lit, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, offering up her nightly prayers and waiting for him. Giles nodded as she untangled the string of prayer beads from her hands and put them in the sack on the table.
‘When do you leave, my lord?’
‘At first light.’ He faced her and placed his hands on his hips, with a stern expression in his eyes. ‘While we are in our chambers, could you use my given name?’
She thought she might have screamed it out when he’d pleasured her and her face grew hot as she remembered.
‘My lords are for others, lady,’ he said. ‘In return, I shall remember to call you Fayth.’
‘Are you not yet accustomed to your rank and its privileges?’ she asked. ‘Or do you think of someone else when you hear it?’
‘Very astute, lady.’ He nodded. ‘I am not accustomed and I do think of someone else when I hear it. My father’s father was called Giles, so I expect to see him enter whenever I hear “Lord Giles” said.’ He grew solemn then. ‘And since he did not wish to lay eyes on me, it was never a good thing when he did.’
He began undressing and she tried not to watch, but after she had seen him work in the yard in only his breeches and after she had felt him against her last night, his body did interest her. Even knowing it was unseemly for a well-born lady to be curious about such things, she could not stop watching him now.
Giles paused in undressing, mostly because the sound of his wife’s shallow breathing as she watched him was arousing him. If truth be told, everything she did or said aroused him. His plan of exhausting himself before climbing into bed with her had not worked, so he thought he would try coming to bed awake enough to control his wayward desire. As he noticed her eyes staring at his cock as it extended itself and hardened in his breeches he knew that would not work either.
Thinking of other things, or attempting to, he realised that he had not had a woman since before leaving Normandy. That was most definitely part of the problem, for when he spoke of the heat of battle, he meant it. The rage and excitement of facing one’s foes and fighting for your life, or theirs, created a powerful rush of blood and made most men hard. And that led to the rape and pillaging by those men who could not be controlled.
The biggest part of his problem, though, was the woman who continued to gaze at his manhood and who would share the bed with him that night.
‘Mayhap you should get into bed now, lady?’
‘Your pardon, my…’ She paused as he narrowed his eyes at her and shook his head. ‘Giles,’ she whispered instead. ‘I was distracted.’
She said it with no attempt to be humorous, for he suspected she was as innocent of the events between men and women as she seemed to be, and yet she kept looking at him and not moving from the chair.
He walked past her and nearly tore the coverings from the bed in his attempts to lift them and hasten her entrance into it. Finally, she dropped the blanket from her shoulders and, lifting her shift, climbed up on the bed and over to the far side. He decided to be blunt with her, or the night would be a long, sleepless one for him.
‘Are you reticent about what happens between us because I am not of your rank?’ He could not say the word to her; it carried such shame for him. She turned on her side and watched as he put out the candles and approached the bed.
‘Not of my rank?’ she asked and he could see the hint of a smile on her lips. ‘Truly, I think the problem lies not with the status of your birth but with the place of it and how you came to be here.’ She brushed her hair over her shoulder with her hand and watched him closely. ‘Even our King Harold had two wives at the same time and children by both. They cannot all be legitimate, can they?’
Stunned by her admission and her logic, he laughed. ‘One would think not.’
He untied his breeches and tugged them down, over his erect manhood. He tossed them on the chair and then went through his routine of placing his sword and dagger within an arm’s length. Giles turned and put out the last candle in full view of her before following her under the coverings. This time, for the first time, he left no layers between them.
Giles settled beside her and pondered his next move. Still of a mind to ease her into lovemaking by introducing her a step at a time, so that she was ready once he had his answer, he thought to use her curiosity. First, though, he must make certain of one thing.
‘I would pleasure you, lady, but fear it causing you distress.’ She gasped then. Mayhap a bit too blunt? ‘I thought you enjoyed it last night, but then your tears confused me and I would not touch you if it pains you.’
‘I hesitate to speak on such things, but my father always said I spoke too much like a man, my lord. He said it was ever my failing.’ She let out a loud sigh and then he felt her turn towards him in the bed. ‘I liked what happened between us, but I feel as though I am being faithless to my family and my people if I seek your touch.’
‘I am your husband, before God and your people. I have the right to…’
Her finger laid across his lips shocked him. ‘You have been patient with my hesitation, Giles, when another man…’
‘Another Norman?’ he offered.
‘Another conqueror,’ she corrected, ‘would not be so.’
She was so close to allowing him and he did not wish to jeopardise her taking the step on her own, but his body burned for her. ‘There is another way,’ he suggested, not daring to think it could work.
Before she could say another word, he turned her onto her back and covered her with his body. Taking her hands in his and stretching them over her head, he kissed her, pressing his lips against hers until she opened for him. He traced the outline of her lips with his tongue before taking her mouth with his. He swept his tongue into her mouth, seeking her, and then suckled on it when she touched it to his.
Then he stopped.
Lifting his face from hers, he whispered, ‘Some men would force it on you, force you to accept their touch.’
He now caught both hands in one and used the other to trace along her arm to her side and then up onto her breast. Her nipple pebbled against his palm. Her body reacted to his touch and he felt as though he had lost his mind. Leaning down, he possessed her mouth with his until they both lost their breaths.
‘Some like the use of force,’ he said to test her reaction. ‘They like to be held against their will and made to accept all manner of pleasures forced on them.’ He reached down and tugged her shift up until it reached her waist.
‘Nay! Truly?’ she asked then in a breathy voice.
Giles leaned over and kissed the nipple of her breast even through the linen that covered it, licking at it and using his teeth against it before sucking it into his mouth and possessing that, too.
Instead of raging, she seemed to melt against him and writhed under his body. Trying to remember the point he was making, he eased off to one side and slid his leg up between hers until it pressed at the junction of her thighs. She gasped but did not p
rotest and when he felt the wetness between her legs on his, he slid it further between, enjoying the slickness her body wept on him.
‘Truly,’ he whispered. ‘A woman who is overpowered has no choice—she cannot be blamed for what happens.’
Still holding her hands above her head, he moved to the other breast and teased it as he had the first. While sucking on the hardened tip of that one, he opened his hand wide on her bare skin under her shift and slid it down over her ribs, then over her stomach towards the place where his leg lay holding her in place.
‘Nay,’ she cried out, stopping his every movement.
‘Hush,’ he said, leaning against her cheek, ‘it is all in jest, lady.’ He released her hands and whispered, ‘I would never take you in force, lady, nor anger.’
Though his body screamed in rage at him for stopping. His cock wanted nothing so much as to bury itself hilt deep in her heat and wetness. His blood pounded through his veins, demanding that he take her and take her hard and deep. Giles rolled off her knowing he must catch hold of his lust before he did what he’d promised her he would not.
‘Have I frightened you beyond words now, lady?’
‘I did not want you to believe you had to force me to this, Giles,’ she said softly. ‘I took a vow and am your wife. If you seek pleasure in our marriage bed, I will not refuse you.’
‘Not refuse me? Will you lie there like something dead and allow my touch, lady? I think that would be worse than not touching you at all.’
Would he for ever be the bastard child begging for something from his betters? He knew that a woman of Fayth’s rank and breeding did not consort with bastard and landless knights, unless she was seeking some amusement or attention when her lord husband was being pleasured by his leman or whore.
‘I do not think I could lie motionless if you touch me the way you just did.’
He turned on his side towards her now. ‘I had thought to ease your way into relations with me, instead of waiting until you have your courses and then taking you. I had thought we could become accustomed in this manner.’ He tried to explain and would have but she stopped him once more with her finger across his lips.
‘Then accustom me to your touch, husband,’ she whispered.
He kissed her fingers and took her hand in his. ‘Will you cry after I do?’
Silence answered him instead of words. Then she moved closer to him on the bed. ‘I cannot promise that I will not cry, Giles, but I will try not to let it happen.’
He considered letting go of this mad plan until he felt her hand slide down onto his chest and into the hair there. He rolled onto his back and let her explore him as she pleased. Until, that was, she reached his cock and tried to touch him there. Giles stayed her hand. ‘Nay, not that.’
‘Does it hurt, then? To touch it?’ she asked.
‘In a way I cannot explain, lady, but I can show you.’
He released her hand and moved his to her legs, caressing them until they trembled beneath his fingers. Giles reached over and lifted her leg over his hip, drawing her closer and opening her to his exploration. Gliding over the curls and then her stomach and then back, he listened as her breathing came faster and faster. Using his fingers and his thumb, he spread the folds of her womanhood apart and pressed against the hardened bud there.
‘Does it hurt to touch there?’ he asked.
She arched into his hand even more and keened out a throaty moan as she did it. The passionate noises continued as he brought her to the edge of release time and time again, but would not let her over it. When she could only moan in wordless sounds, he pressed his palm against her curls and his finger against that sensitive place until he felt her spasm against his hand. Holding her tightly there, he waited as her release rolled over her and until she fell onto her back, her leg grazing his hardness as she did.
Giles was tempted to seek his own release until she reached over and touched him there. ‘Nay, lady, do not,’ he began.
‘Did you not say you would call me Fayth, Giles?’ she asked as she began to slide her hand down his rod. ‘Help me,’ she whispered. ‘I know not how…’
‘Fayth,’ he said on a groan as her innocent caress proved more stirring than a practised one could.
He captured her hands and guided her movements until it was his turn to moan out his release. He felt her lay back and, trying to rearrange the bedclothes, he discovered that she had already fallen asleep. Making certain she was covered, he turned on his side.
His last thought as sleep took him was that if there was this pleasure without being inside her, what could it be like when he was planted deep within?
He was gone in the morning when she woke and it was only when Ardith tended to the fire that she discovered that he’d given orders for her to be left undisturbed. Since the chamber was dark and only the occasional sound of thunder rumbled overhead, she knew that going to the village was not a possibility this day. Accepting his gift of staying in bed long past daybreak, Fayth fell back into the arms of sleep.
It was some time later that day when her courses started. As two days passed and the third began she wondered what his reaction would be to the news that she was the virgin she swore herself to be.
The bad storms continued for those three days, unabated, and she thought he must be wholly uncomfortable surveying his lands in the relentless rain. They had spoken of her father’s lands, now his, but she was unfamiliar with the neighbouring ones. She knew one reason he rode was that he sought a location on which to build a new keep in the Norman fashion.
Fayth had been working in the small room off the hall where she kept all the records of the manor, as her father had before her, when she had happened to overhear Giles speaking to his friend about the need of a defensible keep.
As much as she’d like to believe that fighting was over, she feared it was not. Each day brought reports of sightings of outlaws and William’s move north-and westward. Brice accepted them on Giles’s behalf from the messengers sent by their Norman neighbours or from the king. And the knight was none too happy when news of his own holding did not arrive.
When nothing could be moved because the wagons became mired in the muddy roads and the rain and winds continued into that third day, Brice sought relief the way men did—he challenged several of the other knights to swordplay. The rains kept her inside and no amount of cajoling would make her venture forth to see him defeat his opponents.
Finally, the fourth morning after Giles left, the sun rose full in the sky, blessing the cold, wet ground with warmth and light. The roads began to dry out late in the morning and Fayth decided it was time to venture back into the village and try to complete some of the work she’d set out to do before her husband’s return.
Chapter Thirteen
F ayth finished the last part of her inventory in the weaver’s hut and wrote down the information on her parchment scroll before she forgot. Brice appeared at the door.
‘Lady, sundown is approaching. How much longer will you need before you are ready to return to the keep?’ he asked.
Looking around the hut, she noticed one more pile of bolts of material that she’d missed. They were lucky this cottage did not burn during the attack, for they would have lost a fortune in a goodly amount of woven fabrics her father had purchased at market just this past summer.
‘Not much longer, sir. A short while?’ she asked.
‘Then heed my call this time and do not make me come searching for you,’ he said, brusquely. He paused and gave her an apologetic glance. ‘My lady.’ He bowed before leaving the cottage.
She’d been the bane of his existence these last days and he served as an example to her of why a man-of-war needed to be a man-at-war. She had no idea why his duke delayed in granting Brice the lands promised, but he did not handle the waiting well. Fayth smiled to herself over the many examples of his impatience she’d seen since Giles had left the keep, and she would not be surprised if there was a fight when he returned.
She forced herself to breathe slowly and to push such thoughts of lust and passion from her mind, especially when she had work to complete. Her body fought her efforts, tingling and throbbing in those private places where he had pleasured her with his hands and his mouth. What would it feel like when he finally joined to her with that part of him that she’d caressed so intimately? Would the thickness and length of him hurt as he took her maidenhead and made her his wife in reality?
Her mouth grew dry, but that place between her legs where he would thrust and complete the marriage act grew wetter and wetter with each wicked thought. Dabbing at her heated face with the edge of her sleeve, she turned her attentions back to the work before her.
Fayth had divided the final pile of fabrics by type and was measuring and counting as fast as she could when the cottage door opened once more.
‘Your pardon, Sir Brice. I did not hear your call,’ she began, turning to face his bluster. But it was not Brice who stood before her.
Edmund Haroldson, the man who should be Earl of Wessex and heir to the throne of England, ducked into the cottage and quickly pulled the door closed behind him. So shocked was she that Fayth could only blink and gape at him.
‘Fayth!’ he whispered to her. ‘Are you well?’
He held his arms open to her and she ran into his embrace. His arms, strong and tight around her, comforted her as none others had since her father’s departure to the north. She clutched him just as fiercely as the memories of her life before the duke’s arrival on their shores passed through her mind. Only when he leaned away did she loosen her hold on him.
The Conqueror's Lady Page 13