In the Shadow of Midnight

by Marsha Canham

  Chapter 20

  Ariel hugged the folds of her cloak close around her shoulders, barely aware of the cold gusts of wind tearing at her hair, or the wet spray of rainwater blowing through the squared teeth of the battlement walls.

  She had taken the cat’s climb to the roof, needing time alone with her thoughts and her feelings, hoping to cleanse both with the cold, crisp air. On a sunny day, the view of the sea below would be breathtaking. This night, against stormy skies and the gray-green luminescence of a turbulent sea, she saw nothing but nature’s anger and frustration shadowing her own. Each howl of the wind, each hard tattoo of rain that beat on stone and mortar, each rumble and crash of the sea hurling itself against the craggy coastline found an echo in her own battered emotions.

  Not that anyone else cared.

  Henry had gone back to the great hall with the captain, hopefully to find Sedrick still in one piece. Robin had gone somewhere with FitzRandwulf … something about a rendezvous he had arranged earlier with the maid, Marienne. They had all gone, leaving her alone. Assuming she preferred it that way? Or assuming she knew they all had better things to do.

  FitzRandwulf obviously did, now that his Eleanor was on the verge of being his.

  I will offer her something I know she cannot refuse. Something she has wanted, needed, and is now free to grasp with her whole heart and soul.

  He would offer Eleanor himself, of course. As husband, lover, protector. And in truth, the Pearl of Brittany would have no reason to refuse him. She was no longer a claimant to the throne. The royal blood of kings and queens still flowed through her veins, but the work of a glowing hot iron had stripped her of her birthright, stripped her of any obstacles standing in the way of a union between her and the bastard son of the Black Wolf.

  How the sight of his beloved Eleanor must have shocked him! Eduard’s love for her was so pure, so noble; it went deeper than any emotion Ariel could ever conceive of a man having for a woman. Deeper than anything she could in any honesty ever hope to experience herself.

  Eduard FitzRandwulf d’Amboise had never professed to love her. He had never even led her to believe he liked her. He may have lusted after her a time or two, may even have had moments when the lure of soft female flesh had been too overwhelming for his rigid code of honour. But that was not love. It was a kiss stolen under the moonlight, or a challenge answered in kind. It was the effect of too much ale and a virile male body left too long craving something it thought was too far out of reach.

  Well, he could reach Eleanor of Brittany now. He could reach her and hold her and love her … and probably never spare another thought for Ariel de Clare, wife of some distant Welsh prince.

  Ariel leaned her brow against the cold, wet stone and knew the ache she was feeling inside would not as easily be forgotten, nor would it be assuaged by just any man. Most certainly not a man like Rhys ap Iorwerth, slayer of fawns.

  “Sweet Mary, Mother of God,” she whispered. “Why has this thing happened to me? Why now? Why with this man? Of all men … why did it have to be this one?”

  A gust of wind whipped the wet ribbons of her hair out behind her, snatching at the folds of her cloak and belling it like a sheet of canvas under full sail. Breathless, gulping air and tears and misery, she turned to seek the shadowy protection of the covered stairwell … and slammed abruptly into the wall of Eduard FitzRandwulf’s chest.

  “There you are,” he said, steadying her on her feet. “I know you told me you like storms, but is this not a little mad, even for you?”

  With a gasp, Ariel sobbed something unintelligible and spun out into the rain and wind again, running farther along the catwalk until she came to an arch of stairs that bridged the roof of one tower to the next. Before she could cross it, however, Eduard’s hands, then his arms circled her waist and brought her unceremoniously down again, pinning her against his body until she had kicked and squirmed and thrashed herself half into a frenzy.

  “Ariel? What in damnation—?”

  “Let me go! Take your filthy bastard’s hands off me and let me go You have what you want now. You have your Eleanor, your precious Pearl. You have your princess and I have my prince, and by God, we shall both be happy now because it is what we both want!”

  She was strong and lithe and was able to wriggle free, breaking for the steps again before Eduard could fully absorb the thrust of her words. He made a grab for her and missed, but her foot caught in a wet twist of her cloak, sending her down on one knee before she could recover and lunge for the steps. It was long enough for him to catch up to her and when he did, he lifted her bodily against his chest and held her there until he could turn and trap her between himself and the battlement wall.

  “Listen to me, Ariel,” he hissed against her ear. “You have to listen to me.”

  “I have listened to you. I have listened and I have watched and I know how much you love her. I do not need to hear the words to know it.”

  “Ariel—!”

  “No!” She covered her ears with her hands and crumpled her eyes tightly shut, refusing to acknowledge his command for attention.

  The rain beat down on Eduard’s unprotected head and shoulders, soaking his hair, running in chilling rivulets down his throat and under his clothes. His hands gripped her shoulders and trembled with the desire to shake her, but instead, with a deliberate, gentle strength, he took hold of her wrists and pried her hands away from her ears.

  “Is that what you think? Do you think Eleanor and I …? That we are lovers?”

  Ariel kept her eyes adamantly shut against the lure of his voice. “I do not have to think anything. You told me you loved her. You said you had pledged your life to her. You carried her ring next to your heart just as she carried yours. And now you are risking all … everything … to save her! What else should I think?”

  Eduard found himself at a loss. His grip on her wrists tightened a moment, then sprang free entirely as he shoved his fingers into the wet, tangled mass of her hair. He forced her to tilt her head up, forced her to open her eyes, and meet the silvery gray intensity of his own.

  “You should think … hard … about the difference between loving someone you regard as a sister, or a cousin, or a sweet and gentle friend”—his fingers raked deeper, lifting her face higher—“and loving someone who burns their way into your heart and soul like a flame. I love Eleanor, yes. With all of my heart. She was the first true friend I ever had, and I am probably the only friend she has ever had. We traded rings a thousand years ago when she exacted a childhood promise from me to always be her champion, to always slay dragons in her name. We traded again tonight”—he paused and fished angrily beneath his tunic-“when she made me swear to let the one true beast who is her uncle live.”

  Ariel stared at the delicate filigreed ring and noticed where his own skinned thumb was once again bare. Her gaze rose slowly to his but she could not see him clearly for the sudden film of bright, hot tears.

  “The way you acted,” she whispered raggedly. “The things you said …”

  “I have acted like a fool,” he agreed tersely. “And I have said things I never should have said. What is more, I am probably going to do it again, now, when I confess the hunger—the love—I feel for you is neither brotherly nor based on friendship. It is like an open, raw wound I cannot seem to heal. It only grows wider and deeper each time I touch you, or hold you, or … dream of holding you even closer.”

  Ariel’s lips quivered apart. “Me?” she gasped. “You love … me?”

  His fingers threaded into her hair again, tenderly this time, more of a caress than a punishment. “If this ache I feel every time I look at you is love … then aye, I must love you. If this need I have to hold you and kiss you until you have not the will or the strength to refuse me what I would take from you … if this is love, then aye, my lady, I am floundering in it … and have been since the moment I saw you tilting at shadows in the armoury at Amboise.”

  Ariel thought the walls and rooftops t
ook a sudden swift dip downward and she had to curl her hands into the thickness of his surcoat to keep from staggering to her knees.

  “The other night … at the inn …?”

  “I should never have gone near you,” he said huskily. “Never. It only made me want you more.”

  “But … you pushed me away.”

  Eduard shook his head slowly. “I did not push you away; I pushed myself away.”

  Ariel knew she should say something. She knew she should. But the quivering in her lips had spilled downward, had spread and become a trembling, throbbing heat that shivered into her belly and between her thighs, rendering her speechless. And because she could not speak, her eyes implored him for the truth, eyes that were wide and dark and so completely stripped of pride, they left him no choice but to answer.

  He made a sound deep in his throat—a groan or a curse, she could not be certain—and his lips crushed down over hers, his response delivered so fiercely, so possessively, the shock of it left her breathless, drowning in her own heat.

  Rain beat on their shoulders and splattered on the stones. The sea and sky rumbled like shifting boulders, offering a final warning, but it went unheeded. Eduard’s good and noble intentions were lost in the consummation of taste, touch, and desperately clinging mouths.

  His body crowded hers against the rampart and their mouths slanted this way and that, their tongues lashing together, their breaths raging hot and fast. Their heartbeats clamored a challenge to the storm unleashing itself around them and the trembling needs in their bodies rivalled the tumultuous, recoiling shocks that echoed off the stone walls.

  “Eduard,” she gasped. “Eduard …”

  Rainwater bathed her face, made her hair cling to her temples and throat in dark, wet streaks. Eduard tore his mouth away and searched the shadows like a wild man, seeking a sheltered corner, an archway, a protected lee …

  “Here,” she demanded. “Now. With God watching, we shall defy the oaths made in His name. I am not afraid, Eduard. If you love me, I am not afraid.”

  Eduard blinked the rain and wind out of his eyes. He lifted his hands away from her long enough to loosen the buckles at his shoulders and to shrug his belts and baldric aside along with the heavily quilted surcoat. Within seconds the rain began to soak the linen of his shirt, plastering it to his skin, molding it to the hard slabs of muscle across his chest and shoulders. Seconds more and he might as well have been naked for all that the mysteries of his body were revealed in bold, rising magnificence.

  He made short work of removing Ariel’s cloak and loosening the green velvet tunic. His hands caressed her through the gaping layer of velvet before his fingers curled around bunches of fabric and tore the two halves asunder. Ariel arched her head back, her neck and throat glistening under the sheeting rain, her hands cradling the heat of his mouth to her bared flesh as he buried his face between her breasts. He reached for the hem of her skirt and pulled the crush of velvet up over her hips, his fingers greedy and searching as he sent them delving into the moist, deep heat of her.

  A jolt of lightning traced across the sky as Ariel opened herself to the pressure of his stroking fingers. She was wettest there, where the rain had yet to find her, and hot … so hot he groaned and dragged her down onto the spread folds of her cloak, his hands moving swiftly, feverishly to free his own pounding flesh from the confines of his clothes.

  With a mindlessness fueled by passion and long-denied hunger, he was between her thighs, he was pushing himself forward, he was thrusting into the lush folds of her body and stretching up inside, furrowing into her with a sense of urgency echoed by her long, shivering cry of fulfillment.

  Ariel’s mindless need forgave him his haste. Indeed, she revelled in the obvious agony of his own blinding demands, for there was but a moment of resistance, gone in the passing of a heartbeat, leaving only the more astounding awareness of being filled, impaled, glutted with hard male flesh. She groaned and arched her hips instinctively, straining to feel even more of him inside her. He obliged by thrusting again … and again … by plunging his hands beneath her bottom and lifting her until she learned how to lift herself, how to twine her legs around his waist and lock them there so that she could move with him, move against him, move for him.

  Lightning bathed their bodies in a blue-white lustre, the rain causing their exposed flesh to gleam like marble. The sound of the wind and the sea drowned out the groans, muffled the ragged gasps of ecstasy that sent Ariel’s hands clawing into the rapid rise and fall of his hips. Something burst within her. Something brilliant and beautiful, something bright and fiery hot that sucked the breath from her lungs and set her body moving in a blur beneath him.

  Eduard threw his head back and gave one last mighty thrust into the convulsing softness. His eyes squeezed shut and his lips drew back over the slash of his teeth, but there was no withholding, no controlling the passion that erupted within him. He plunged himself into her, poured himself into her, trembling, quaking in the grips of a pulsating white heat that left him with nothing in reserve, not even his pride.

  Ariel shivered.

  It was only once and only the tiniest of gestures, but Eduard noticed and was quick to crouch before the fire and add another log to the iron crib. His hair was still wet, smooth and inky, pushed back from his brow by an impatient hand. As she watched, a sparkling bead of water gathered at the tip of a curl and was shaken free with the movement of his arm, hissing when it splashed on the hot stones.

  He had just finished helping Ariel towel the excess moisture from her own hair and it was spread around her shoulders, little better than a wild froth of curls for all the vigorous rubbing. He had insisted she strip out of the remnants of her wet clothes and he had bundled her into a warm, dry blanket before seating her in front of the fire. He had not, as yet, spared a thought to his own comfort. His shirt still clung in wet patches to his shoulders; his hose were stained dark from the soaking. He had retrieved his surcoat and her cloak from the rooftop and both garments were hung over a chair, steaming and dripping into the silence.

  Ariel studied his broad back, wondering what was going through his mind. He had not spoken more than a word or two since carrying her down out of the rain and she knew she was partly if not wholly to blame for his closed expression. She had caused him to break an oath of honour—no trifling matter to a knight at the best of times. This, however, must surely have been one of the worst, what with the shock of discovering Princess Eleanor’s blindness already playing havoc with his emotions.

  Ariel was not entirely guiltless herself, now that the heat of passion had cooled somewhat. She had behaved like a wild woman, clawing and spitting one minute, tearing at his clothes and keening like a hoyden the next. So much for nobility and breeding. So much for ever thinking she could hold herself aloof, unaffected by something so coarse and debasing as the physical act of coupling.

  The experience had left her feeling anything but aloof and unaffected. She felt warm and slippery inside, acutely aware of a new tenderness between her thighs that throbbed and ached as if he was still there, strong and vital. Her skin tingled and her body hummed with a shameful restlessness. In spite of the rain, in spite of their haste and surroundings … in spite of everything, their joining had been a thing of immeasurable joy and beauty. Nothing quite so trivial as the word coupling could ever describe it, for far more than just their physical bodies had been joined. It was as if he had reached inside and touched her soul.

  The new log had caught fire and Eduard ran out of excuscs to poke and prod and rearrange the bed of hot coals. There was nothing else to be gained—or lost—by continuing to avoid the haunting green sparkle of her eyes, and he turned to face her, not quite knowing what he would see … or what he wanted to see.

  She was beautiful: that was his first thought. Lushly, erotically beautiful with the flush of newfound awareness glowing soft and pink in her cheeks. He had only caught a glimpse of slender white limbs and a shiveringly cool body when sh
e rid herself of her sodden clothing, but what he remembered caused his throat to close and his eyes to slip down to the edge of the blanket where it had begun to droop over her shoulder.

  The enormity of what he had done kept his jaw tensed and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He had ravished the intended bride of a prince of Gwynedd. He had ravished the niece of William the Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, the most feared and respected knight in all of England, Normandy, and Wales. To a lesser degree, but of no less importance, he had ravished the sister of Lord Henry de Glare, a stalwart young lion in his own right who would no doubt take grave offence to FitzRandwulf’s lack of control.

  Silence stretched between them for another awkward moment before Eduard sighed and looked down at his hands.

  “What we did … what I did—” he said quietly, “was an unconscionable breach of trust, my lady, and I take full blame for it.”

  “Full blame is not yours to take, my lord,” she replied softly, “for I do not recall fighting you overmuch. Challenging you, aye … but not fighting you. Thus we shall have to share the blame in equal parts.”

  Eduard was adamant. “I took advantage.”

  “I was a willing partner.”

  “You were innocent.”

  “I may have been a virgin, but I was hardly innocent.”

  “My fault again,” he said with a frown. “For you still would have been innocent had I managed to keep my hands off you in St. Malo.”

  “In body, perhaps. Not in thought.” She waited until the silver-gray eyes rose to hers before she added to her admission. “Had my thoughts been actions, I would have lost my innocence in the armoury at Amboise.”

  “To a brute and a lecher, and a”—he paused and smiled faintly—“a great gawping ape?”

  “You were the first man who looked at me as if I was a woman and not just the means to an alliance with the Marshal of England.”

  “Had I known you were the marshal’s niece, I would not have looked at you at all,” he said dryly.