In the Shadow of Midnight

by Marsha Canham

  “My uncle has never lacked for choices. Nor has he ever backed away from John Softsword in fear. Did you know”— she turned and confronted Eduard with a sparkle of pride in her eyes—“the king once dared to question my uncle’s loyalty before the court. My uncle! The man who made him king! And when my lord marshal demanded the Plantagenet usurper settle the matter by sword … not one of John’s so-called champions dared to pick up the gauntlet. Nay, they all turned their faces and lowered their eyes, and their knees made such a knocking sound in the audience chamber, the king had to shout his recantation to have it heard above the din.”

  Ariel lifted her chin and presented her shoulder to Eduard again. “When I marry, it will not be to some bung-nosed, sin-born gaoler’s son. It will be to an earl, at the very least! A landed baron, a palatine of equal or greater rank than my uncle.”

  Eduard chose not to remind her of his own sin-born heritage, but he could not resist mentioning, “A Welsh prince, perhaps?”

  “Saints sieze me!” she cried, whirling on him once more. “Was there nothing about me that went undiscussed?”

  Eduard hesitated, knowing it was neither his place nor his desire to reveal her uncle’s intentions. “I am certain the earl mentioned it only because he thought you found the prince a more deserving match than the son of a … a common routier.”

  Ariel watched his mouth form the words. He was out of the shadows now and she could see his features much more clearly. It was a fascinating mouth, full in shape and rather more sensual sculpted by the stormy half-light. Further tricks of the uncertain sky drew her eye to the vertical cleft that divided the strong chin, and to the absurdly long lashes any woman would have drawn teeth to possess. Indeed, it was a shame about the scar. Without it … or even with it …

  She looked abruptly away and swallowed hard. “Anything would be preferable to a gaoler’s son, but yes, I did suggest to my uncle that Lord Rhys ap Iorwerth would be more acceptable. He was”—she curled the fleshy pad of her lip between her teeth and made a hasty correction—“he is certainly my first choice amongst the many suitors my aunt and uncle have proposed. He is handsome. Charming. A prince, for mercy’s sake.”

  “The husband of every maiden’s dreams,” he concluded wryly.

  Ariel’s jaw snapped shut. “The thought amuses you, does it?”

  “My lady?”

  “The notion of my marrying a prince,” she said tautly, glaring up at him. “You find it laughable?” “I am not laughing.” “But you do have an opinion.”

  “My opinion, my lady”—he paused and watched a lick of shiny red hair blow across the lush pout of her lips—“is that I have no opinions whatsoever when it comes to marriage. Only that I would be content unto death to remain well out of it.”

  “You have no lady love?”

  “No.”

  “Never craved one?” “The very notion of craving a wife—” “I did not say wife, I said lady love. Have you never been in love?”

  “Craving … and loving … are two entirely different matters,” he said, wondering how the devil he had become trapped in this conversation. “Neither of which, I am happy to recount, have plagued me to the point of sleeplessness.”

  His answer was sharp and perfunctory, meant to discourage any further probings. Naturally, it had the opposite effect on Ariel and she had to stop herself from openly speculating on what kind of woman would earn the affections of this scarred, enigmatic knight. He was a bastard, true enough, but there were many households where five and six daughters needed husbands, where the youngest and least dowered would look only too readily on a union with the D’Amboise name. Had his aim been too high, perhaps? Was it the reverse of her own situation, where she, being of noble blood, would not be expected to marry below the salt, regardless if the groom was selected by the king or by the pope himself?

  She sighed, the importance of Eduard’s situation, real or imagined, being supplanted by the desperation of her own.

  “I suppose I am partly to blame for what has happened,” she said miserably. “I should have heeded my aunt’s advice and paid more serious attention to the parade of suitors who have called at Pembroke. There have been so many,” she added sardonically, “’tis a certainty more than a few would have passing acquaintance with the king. Perhaps … I should have made myself so horribly unappealing, no man would have taken an interest in me. No man would have touched me, through craving or loving.”

  As if on cue, a long, silky strand of her hair escaped her hood and slithered past his cheek. It was very shiny and very metallic, also the only thing about her that retained any colour other than blue or black. As he reached up to disentangle it from his shoulder and sleeve, he remembered all too vividly how it had looked that afternoon—a crushing abundance of pure flame, red and gold. Unlike anything he had ever seen before.

  Unlike anything he imagined he would see again.

  Thus distracted, he was taking so long to offer the expected and chivalrous reassurances that nothing she could do short of boiling her face in oil and studding it with iron spikes could render a man anything less than speechless with her beauty, she was forced to glare up at him again.

  “Unless, of course,” she said in a brittle voice, “I am already so ugly I should expect nothing better than a gaoler’s son?”

  Eduard met the dark sparkle of her eyes. “I hardly think you need fear that, my lady.”

  “Do you not? Was that why you thought to steal a kiss from me earlier today … because you thought me to be so beautiful?”

  Beautiful, Eduard mused. Half-naked. Delectably defiant. A grin pulled at his mouth as he considered all of these reasons. “In truth, I might have thought to steal more than one had you not put me in my proper place.”

  Now she knew he was mocking her, and Ariel felt the heat rise in her blood. “Just because you have been put in your place … does this mean you no longer find me desirable?”

  Eduard’s gaze roved over the shape of her face, lingering on the full, pouting lips before sliding lower. The swirling wind grasped at the opportunity for mischief and swept the hood of her mantle off her head and sent the fluttering wings of wool ballooning out behind her. The blanchet she wore beneath was pale and shapeless, but the wind molded it to her body like water, and the linen glowed almost silver in the glowering light. A second gust filled the air with long, rippling drifts of her hair. It clouded her face and shoulders; sleek, curling ribbons of it were flung across the gap between them, the strands clinging to his shoulders, tangling with his own dark mane.

  Despite his opinion of her being a spoiled, sharp-tongued brat who deserved to be bound to a dung collector to learn humility, Eduard could not in all honesty deny the response she aroused in his body. She was a beauty, and he was no monk. His blood began to flow slowly and sluggishly, just as it did in the still moments before a battle. There was a heaviness in the pit of his belly, an expanding and swelling that not only took him by surprise, but prompted him to step forward, not back, and to meet the bright challenge in her eyes.

  He lifted his hands and caught two slippery fistfuls of her hair, gathering them back out of the wind, trapping them at the nape of her neck.

  “Would you like me to find you desirable?” he inquired softly.

  Ariel’s mouth dropped open. An odd, giddy rush of hot blood flooded her limbs as she found herself staring up into eyes as dark and turbulent as the sky overhead.

  “I … want nothing from you, sirrah,” she managed to whisper.

  Thunder cracked overhead and Eduard used the brief distraction to rake his hands deeper into the glory of those copper curls, twining them around his fists so that she was forced to arch her neck back and to press her body closer to his.

  Ariel was startled by the contact, stunned by the bold intimation of his hands and body. She tried to turn her head, to wrest it out of his grip, but he held firm. He crowded her even closer to the battlements, his torso an immense, overpowering wall of muscle, his mouth a c
ruel torment that offered no compromise.

  “You want nothing at all?” he murmured. “Not even a reason to prove me more of a bastard than I am?”

  Ariel gasped but his head was already bending forward. His mouth, surprisingly warm and supple, brushed over hers, taunting her with the promise of further outrages to come. She gasped again, intending to rail him for his audacity, but before a word or breath could be uttered, her lips were no longer being merely brushed, no longer being taunted. They were being devoured, possessed, ravished by a mouth that was suddenly as ruthless and arrogant as the man himself.

  There was a moment—a brief moment, she reflected afterwards—when she could, conceivably, have stopped him. It came halfway between a cry and a disbelieving whimper, when he lifted his head and stared down at her, fully expecting some violent display of indignation. In truth, her eyes were stretched wide with that very sentiment and her lips trembled with wordless condemnation … but it was her hands, freed from entrapment against his chest that forfeited any thought of reprieve. They climbed higher onto his shoulders and instead of raking bloody tracks into his face and throat, laced together at the back of his neck and invited his mouth to descend again, this time to slant with even more ferocity over hers.

  Ever gallant, Eduard obliged. His arms tightened around her and his tongue thrust demandingly into the moist, silken recesses of her mouth. He thrust again, deeper and more determinedly, and he could feel her knees buckling with the shock of such lusty intrusions.

  Ariel was no stranger to the act of kissing; kisses of peace were exchanged frequently in greeting her uncle’s vassals and liegemen. But they were polite, chaste gestures, rarely given on the lips, and never openmouthed and devouring. Up until now, a kiss had held little more import than the touching of hands. It had never commanded the focus of her entire body. It had never caused her skin to constrict in the most alarming ways and places, never set her breasts tingling and her stomach churning, or spread such a welter of liquid heat everywhere.

  A scalding wave of it coursed through her limbs causing her to clutch at the folds of his mantle. His tongue was lashing hers with slow, evocative strokes. Her hair had scattered in the wind and was wrapping them both in a sleek, slippery cocoon. Another ragged groan greeted the pressure of his hands as he cradled her hips and pulled them suggestively against his own, introducing her to yet another shocking aspect of his boldness. He was all heat and hard, virile muscles, and she wondered if this was what her aunt had meant when she said a man could sometimes do things to a woman that would render her senseless and without a will of her own.

  She was without will. She was without senses and he could have taken shameless advantage of her helplessness and she would not have known how to stop him.

  Reluctantly, grudgingly, Eduard stopped himself.

  How, by Christ’s blood, he did not know. He had not expected to be left palsied with the tremors of an eager youthling. He had not anticipated she would taste so sweet and hot and needful, or that his flesh would ache with lust for a woman he had scorned only moments before.

  He moved her to arm’s length and struggled to see past the thundering rush of blood in his temples. Her lips, swollen and wet from his assault, quivered slightly as she took quick, shallow breaths to steady her own pounding confusion, and he wondered if she was going to be foolish enough to ask him again if he found her desirable.

  Drops of rain, fat as pendants, began to splatter the walls and turrets around them. Cold splashes of reality broke the spell and Ariel stumbled back another step … and another.

  “If you have no more questions to ask of me, my lady, I would suggest you return to your chambers.”

  Ariel blinked away a heavy splash of rain and stared as a jagged fork of lightning sheared across the sky, fleeting and bright, throwing the terrible chiselled beauty of his scarred face into sharp relief. His hair lay dark against his throat, his eyes glittered with an unholy brilliance that seemed to draw the very breath from her body. Towering before her he looked like a demon. He was a demon, black to the soul, cunning and sly. Devious to the heart, mocking her with words and deeds.

  “I cannot imagine myself asking another solitary thing of you,” she gasped, her lips throbbing so badly she could barely form the words. “Except perhaps that you never make it necessary for me to have to look upon your face again!”

  “Would that I could oblige you, my lady, for I would do so with the greatest pleasure. I fear it will be quite impossible, however, for your uncle has asked me to personally escort your party back to England and deliver you safely into the hands of your betrothed.”

  Ariel reacted as if she had been struck. “You lie! He has done no such thing!”

  “You will doubtless hear it from his own lips in the morning.”

  Ariel shook her head. “You lie. You lie!”

  A bolt of lightning cracked the sky wide open. The rain began to come down in solid sheets, blurring Ariel’s form as she turned and fled along the ramparts. Eduard could only stand and watch. His body was coiled as tightly as a spring; a step would shatter the tension and release the pressure like a quarrel shot from a crossbow.

  He turned his face up into the full force of the rain, hoping the icy needles would cool the heat of his blood. It had been a stupid, mindless mistake to touch her, for no other reason than she belonged to someone else. To her Welsh prince. A man with noble bloodlines, untainted by the sins of the past.

  A sudden thought startled a laugh out of him and Eduard opened his eyes.

  He had told her he was delivering her to her groom, but he had not identified the groom by name. No doubt she was thinking her uncle had chosen to bow to the king’s command and was dispatching her, under heavy escort, to Radnor and Reginald de Braose.

  No doubt as well she would assume the omission had been deliberate on his part. It would set her temper on fire all over again and she would feel twice the need to seek revenge. And perhaps that would be a good thing for both of them. Perhaps it was for the best, for he had the distinct feeling he would be safer dealing with her anger than with soft green eyes and a lush, pouting mouth.

  Chapter 8

  Ariel launched herself through the trap-door and flew down the stairwell, unmindful of her hair and cloak snagging on the rough stone walls. She passed through her chamber in a furious blur and swept on down the main spiral of tower stairs, her damp footsteps slapping each riser in angry haste. Her uncle’s chamber was on the floor below hers and she barged through the outer door, startling a page into leaping out of his sleeping-cot as she blew past. The crash of the inner oak door sent her uncle’s ancient squire scrambling for his sword; the dramatic flinging aside of the closed bed curtains brought the marshal bolt upright and groping for weapons that were not there.

  Ariel stood at the side of the bed, her arms spread wide beneath the folds of her mantle, her fists clutching the panels of curtain. Raindrops sparkled in her hair causing it to glitter like a halo in the light of the single candle left burning at the bedside. The candle was meant to foil evil spirits and keep the devil away, but as Lord William knuckled the sleep out of his eyes and stared at the bat-winged spectre hovering over him, his first wild thought was that the charm had somehow failed.

  “I have come to give you fair warning, Uncle,” Ariel declared, her breasts heaving, her cheeks flushed from running. “I will not marry the lout. I will not even return to England if that is to be my fate, and if you try to force me, I will climb to the highest turret of this accursed castle and throw myself from the peak!”

  “Ariel? Plague take me, girl … what is the hour?”

  “It is late,” she snapped. “Far too late to offer apologies or excuses. I trusted you. I came to you because I loved and trusted you as I have always loved and trusted you!”

  William, whose habit was to sleep naked, drew the blankets up over his belly. His chest was a mass of knotted muscles and swarming gray hairs, the latter frothing like a covering of fresh snow in the
candlelight.

  “Sit you down, girl … no! Fetch a stoup of wine first; my mouth tastes like a farrier’s bib.”

  Ariel thought his eyelids looked polished and heavy enough from drink, and she told him so under her breath as she walked over to the bedside table and poured a measure of wine from the standing ewer. She could hear him grumbling as he pulled on his bliaut and braies, and ordering his man— Tinker, who was almost as old as the marshal and far from being in the blush of his squiring days—to fetch a mantle for warmth.

  Ariel drained the goblet of wine she had poured, bracing herself for the fiery thrill as it coursed down her throat. The strength of it brought a sting to her eyes and caused her to reach out and grasp the tabletop for support, but she weathered the dizzying rush and hastened to pour her uncle another goblet full before he emerged from behind the bed curtains.

  He scowled at the fire in passing as if to confirm, by its life and brilliance, that he had not had his head to the pillow long. The men had spent several hours debating strategies and schemes, seeking weaknesses and trying to anticipate problems in the plan to rescue the princess. When the candles had melted into puddles and several flagons of ale had been emptied, they had decided to adjourn and meet again on the morrow with clear heads and fresh thoughts … which would hopefully have been encouraged by a few hours’ sleep.

  “Could you not have waited until morning to give poor Tinker cause to think his heart had stopped?”

  “No,” she said adamantly. “I could not.”

  William grunted and eased his big body into a chair. He waved for her to bring him the wine and indulged in several deep swallows as he peered at her over the rim. She looked like a wild woman, one of the Welsh Furies who were said to roam the barren, rocky coastline in search of souls to steal. Her hair fell in damp spirals over her shoulders, and her face … something was odd about her face.

  “Where have you been this late of an hour and who have you been talking to with such fine results?”