“I am near certain I have an answer that will satisfy the king,” Rhiannon offered. “Certainly it will not anger him more than departing without leave or farewell. Let me try.”
Chapter Eighteen
Ian had agreed at once, but Simon protested all the way back to the house. He was still angry while Rhiannon undressed him for bed. Ordinarily she would have told him sharply that she needed nothing from him and, if he did not like her behavior, he should cease to urge her to marry him. She was aware, however, that his reaction was her fault. If she had not panicked at the king’s implication that he intended to keep her—which she had momentarily and irrationally connected with all the talk of de Burgh’s imprisonment—Simon would not even have noticed the brief exchange.
Simon’s anger also reflected his own guilt for bringing her to Court and urging her to display her talent. Understanding this, Rhiannon curbed her impatience and uttered soothing murmurs that neither agreed to his way nor insisted on hers. This did not work. Simon glowered at her, his brilliant eyes dark.
“You need not treat me as if I were five years old,” he said crossly.
Rhiannon bit her lip. She knew quite well that Simon expected her to reply, Then do not act that way, which would pave the path for a violent quarrel in which his tensions could be released. Unfortunately, Rhiannon did not feel she could give him the outlet he desired. The house Ian and Alinor had rented contained only the solar and the hall above the vaulted ground floor. Menservants and men-at-arms slept below, while the family and maids and some of Joanna’s and Gilliane’s children were distributed between the hall and solar above.
This was not the place for an argument, Rhiannon decided. Simon might not care who heard him, but Rhiannon was a private person. She simply could not quarrel where everyone could hear. A quarrel, however, was not the only way to relieve tensions. Rhiannon made her eyes large and allowed her lips to droop.
“You are trying to quarrel with me,” she said tragically. “You really do think it would be unnatural to make love to me in a bed.”
Simon had opened his mouth to say, quite furiously, that he had no intention of quarreling with her, but the second sentence struck him mute.
“You have avoided me altogether, ever since we came to Roselynde,” Rhiannon went on dramatically.
This passionate statement was made with a total disregard for the real truth, although it was quite factual. They had not slept together after their last night on the road. However, it was Rhiannon’s fault that they had not been together that first night at Roselynde. Although she had Alinor’s permission, she found herself too shy to walk boldly down the stairs, across the hall where the men-servants slept, and into Simon’s chamber. She knew quite well it was impossible for him to come to her. No man but Ian, except under very special circumstances, was permitted into the women’s quarters of Roselynde keep. Simon had not been up those stairs since he left for fostering when he was nine years old. Probably he would not climb them again until his father or mother was dying.
As to the succeeding nights they had been apart, that was the fault of circumstance. Kingsclere was so small that all except Alinor and Ian, who shared the castellan’s own bed, had slept on pallets, men in the hall and women in the solar. The following night Simon had been at Wallingford.
For a moment Simon was fooled by Rhiannon’s pretense of hurt and her complaint that he had been avoiding her. “No!” he whispered. “No!” and stepped toward her with his arms outstretched.
Realization came before he embraced her, however, and instead of enfolding her gently in his arms, he grabbed her with one hand and slapped her briskly on the buttock with the other.
“Monster!” Rhiannon gasped, leaning heavily against him. “You do not love me any longer. Now you will beat me to death.”
“I am more likely to eat you alive,” Simon murmured, applying his lips to her throat with an enthusiasm that gave a tinge of reality to the threat.
“You will have a hard time chewing this gown, I am afraid,” Rhiannon murmured after a few minutes.
Simon bit her ear lobe gently. “I have good teeth,” he chuckled, “but I think you are right. Perhaps it would be better if we took it off.”
To that he got no reply but a soft sigh, since he had managed to undo one side of her bliaunt and slip his hand inside to stroke her back. However, after unlacing the other side, he drew off the gown with a briskness that was startling. Rhiannon stepped back silently to remove the rest of her clothing, assuming that Simon, now aroused, would wish to get on with the business quickly. During their travels his lovemaking had been rapid—but thorough.
This time, though, she could not have been more wrong. It was true Simon had been brief on the way from Wales to Roselynde, although he made sure she was both roused and contented. It had not occurred to Rhiannon that this was owing to his consideration for her fatigue and the cold and damp of the floor of the tent. Now, however, Simon had time to spare and all the comfort of a warm, curtained bed to play in. Haste was very far from his mind. Moreover, there was just a shade of truth in what Rhiannon had said. He did feel a sense of strangeness in making love to her in a bed. Not that he was unwilling, but the ordinary situation took on an exotic aura.
Having said he wished to eat her, Simon seemed to become fixated on the words. As Rhiannon stepped back, he seized one of her hands and raised it to his mouth. He nibbled the tips of her fingers, kissed her palm, tickled it with his tongue—all the while busily unbuttoning the sleeve of her tunic. His lips and tongue then proceeded to follow the path of the undone buttons, coming to rest in the hollow of her elbow. Then he worked the other sleeve.
Surprised at first, Rhiannon quickly slipped into a soft, sensual haze. At that moment she was not as hotly excited as Simon could make her by an assault on her lips, breasts, and thighs. Instead, she felt slightly unfocused in her thinking, while all the nerve endings in her body increased in sensitivity. It seemed that she could actually make out the shape of his mouth when he kissed her and feel the separate tiny ridges on the tips of his fingers.
Next to be undone was the neck of the tunic. Simon lipped the little hollow where the collarbones meet and nibbled his way down her chest, keeping carefully to the center of the cleft. Rhiannon stood passive, except that her hands made lazy circles and stroking movements on her lover’s bare back. She could feel the muscles twitch very slightly in response to the caress.
As he bent lower to kiss the cleft between her breasts, Simon reached down and grabbed her tunic. It came up as he straightened, but he did not pull it over her head. Instead he maneuvered her through the curtains with kisses and love bites, drawing the tunic off as he laid her down on the bed. Now only the thin linen shift and shoes and stockings remained. The shoes were easy. Simon simply pushed them off with one hand as he untied Rhiannon’s garters with the other. The stockings were more fun. He rolled them down an inch at a time, caressing the bared skin they disclosed.
Sometimes the kisses tickled Rhiannon almost unbearably, but that only heightened her all-over sensitivity. Having reached her toes, Simon began to work his way back up again, raising the shift as he went. Rhiannon’s caresses became more urgent and her hands sought out the areas of Simon’s body that woke the greatest response in him, like the inner thigh and the small of the back just where the buttocks divide. Strangely, although she was now growing very excited, Rhiannon did not reach for Simon’s genitals. It did not seem necessary; all of him seemed peculiarly alive, as she herself was.
Neither had so far made a sound, aside from breathing rather more quickly than usual. There was a piquancy in their silent communication, for a hot glow of passion was now burning in each, and wordless demands were being made and satisfied, using only the instinct of mutual desire. At last Simon’s mouth closed on Rhiannon’s breast, and her hand went between his legs.
After so long a foreplay, their coupling was short and violent, culminating in an explosion that locked Rhiannon’s powerful legs s
o hard around Simon’s back that even his strong bones creaked. Mouth on mouth, they muffled the sounds they could not contain in climax. Replete, they slid apart and into sleep—another peculiarity, because usually they talked and fondled each other for a little while after their passion was spent. But both were too tired this time, partly because of the tension generated during their meeting with the king.
Although Rhiannon slept well, Simon’s anxious dreams that night cast a pall over his awakening in the morning. Although he could not remember any specific event, the dreams intensified his resistance to Rhiannon’s attending Court again. He should have spoken about the matter directly and purged his system, but he did not wish to spoil Rhiannon’s joyous morning mood. Then, immediately after they had broken their fast, he was called away to an urgent conference with Ian’s and Geoffrey’s friends, who wanted to know what Lord Llewelyn would do when—not if—the truce was broken.
Simon did not enjoy the conference. He never took pleasure as Geoffrey did in political maneuvering. He disliked intensely needing to watch and measure his words so that what Llewelyn had told him would come across clear and undistorted by his own desires and prejudices. Equally, he disliked needing to attend closely to what the others said, trying to judge the half-truths so that he could render to his overlord a good account of what he had learned.
All adjudged the situation dangerous to desperation, and to Simon’s greater displeasure, it was decided that it would be best to include Richard of Cornwall in the discussion. Thus, the whole group rode out, but not as a group. To avoid bringing their intention too strongly to Winchester’s notice, they went singly and in twos by different gates. As one of the youngest, Simon was sent out by the westward gate, which added several miles to his ride and a few degrees to the temperature of his temper.
This was not at all cooled by the knowledge that they would dine and spend the night at Wallingford. Nor did it help that he had to repeat nearly everything he had said before and have it thrashed out thoroughly for a third time. That night, deprived of Rhiannon’s company, he awakened in the dark to the irrational fear that she had gone to Court alone and had been seized and hidden away from him. One part of his mind knew perfectly well that this was ridiculous. His mother would never permit such a thing; also, Henry was not perfect, but he did not abduct women. The other part of his mind insisted the fear was an evil omen.
Perhaps if Simon could have ridden directly back to Oxford in the morning or could have discussed the matter with someone, the whole thing would have shrunk back to its real proportions. However, he was extremely aware of his father’s haunted eyes, of Geoffrey’s haggardness, of the fact that even Adam was deeply worried. There were those who had particular fears of or hatreds for the Welsh. They were his burden, and when a group of them asked him to join a hunting party, he could not refuse. He had, of course, shaken off the stupid notion that Henry would seize his betrothed, but he was left with an even stronger distaste for another Court appearance.
The day was hot and the long hunt led them even farther from Oxford. Simon’s companions elected to stop for dinner at—of all places—one of his mother’s properties. Had it been anywhere else, Simon would have excused himself and ridden back alone, but he could not offer such a gratuitous insult—which might even be taken as a mark of dissatisfaction—to a faithful servant. By the time Simon was free to return to Oxford, he was half-mad with the frustration of needing to seem interested and absorbed in the problems of his companions, which in fact meant very little to him.
Over the period of separation, Rhiannon’s mood had changed. Until this day, she had been busy every moment with movement and distracted by new experiences. Alter the menfolk left, however, a second stage of female activity began. At home, she would have ignored this. She would have run out into the woods and spent the day most happily luring wild creatures to her hand or shooting game for the pot or gathering herbs for her lotions and potions.
Instead she was wimpled and gowned with the most rigid propriety and dragged out on a round of visits with Joanna and Gilliane. Rhiannon understood that this was not an idle waste of time. She had displayed the romantic and barbaric aspect of Wales and now had to show that the Welsh could also be proper and civilized. There was information to be seeded and information to be gleaned, rumors to be picked up and those, more suitable to the purposes of Roselynde, to be spread. Rhiannon knew that Gilliane and Joanna were working as hard as their menfolk and toward the same purpose. She judged their efforts both necessary and useful, for she was no fool, and did what she could to assist them. Nonetheless, she found it weary, distasteful work.
Returning to the house tired and irritable, Rhiannon discovered that more of the same awaited her. Since Alinor had received a message from Ian to the effect that all the menfolk would neither dine nor sleep at home, she had invited various women to join her and her daughters. The ostensible purpose was to meet Rhiannon, newly betrothed to Alinor’s youngest son—so Rhiannon had no choice but to attend. The real purpose was the same as before, to gain and disseminate information and opinion.
Unfortunately, in a larger group, it was not possible for the ladies of Roselynde to shield Rhiannon as effectively. Politics was not the only thing discussed, or rather, politics was most often discussed from a personal angle. This resulted in Rhiannon’s being inundated with information about who was sleeping with whom. Henry’s Court was not deliberately licentious the way John’s had been; Henry himself was not a lecher. Nonetheless, he was a young, full-blooded man, no prude, and he would not think of troubling himself with moral regulations that were, in his opinion, the business of the Church and would make many of his dear friends miserable and resentful.
The gossip in itself was distasteful; Rhiannon was not in the least interested in the bed-hopping proclivities of people she did not know, but she was accustomed to such gossip. Her father’s Court was no different, though smaller. Where there are men and women there will be sexual games. The difference was that now, all too often, Rhiannon herself was the target of the tales. Although not all of the women had seen her performance, all knew of it, and many had carefully whetted knives with which to stab her. Thus she was the recipient of more than one broad tale of Simon’s doings, delivered with every range of feeling from genuine concern to vicious venom.
At first Rhiannon was inclined to laugh, remembering how Simon had said that when she was warned against him the half of it would not be true at all and the other half, exaggerated. “Were I what is said of me,” he complained, “I would need seven of everything a man uses to make love…” But when she finally got into the empty bed that night, she began to wonder whether the bed Simon was sleeping in was also empty. It was quite difficult for a woman to be unfaithful to a man. Confined to a home and an area where she was known, it required effort and secrecy to take a lover. That so many women accomplished it was a tribute to female cleverness. A man, on the contrary, had no such problems. He rode where he liked, most often to places it was very unlikely his woman would ever go. How could she know, Rhiannon wondered, whether Simon was true to the oath he had sworn to her?
She told herself not to be a fool. It was ridiculous to think a man who professed love and had made love so eagerly and with such tenderness the preceding night would betray his vows on the next night. She knew that was true, yet she shook and burned, cold and hot with rage and grief and jealousy. Then, when Ian and Geoffrey and Adam came home the next day, saying that Simon had been invited to hunt and would return later. Rhiannon had to make herself busy so that no one would see her face. Choking on her anguish, she asked herself what Simon was hunting. Was he on the trail of a four-legged or a two-legged doe? And even if he truly was hunting deer, did that not show clearly that he preferred the company of his hunt companions to her? Well, and if so, he could have them. She would leave him to them for good and all.
Some time after she reached this resentful conclusion, a squire of the body to the king came with a special invitation
and request that Lady Rhiannon come to sing for Henry and some special guests from Provence. Since the messenger came into the hall while Rhiannon was trying to calm herself by better fitting her French translations to her music, she could scarcely have found an excuse not to go. In her present mood, it never entered her mind to seek any excuse. She accepted the invitation at once, only requesting time to dress herself suitably.
No ease or hope had been discovered in the two days of discussions. Ian was tired and depressed. He did not wish to go to Court and to put on a face of calm and goodwill. Naturally the squire’s instructions did not forbid him to attend; in decency the invitation could not exclude the male kin of any woman invited to the Court. However, the fact that they had not been specifically invited hinted that Henry would prefer their absence. Rhiannon’s safety had been fully provided for. In addition to the squire, there was a full escort of men-at-arms and a promise of a full escort to bring her home safely when her performance was over.
A hurried conference resulted in Rhiannon setting off alone with the squire and her escort when she was ready. It was thought impolitic, almost insulting, to send for Geoffrey or Adam to accompany her. Ian had offered himself, but the sound of his breath rattling in his chest and the glances Alinor had cast at him made Rhiannon’s decision very easy. By now she was sure that Henry had no intention of keeping her by force—which was absolutely true, the king had never thought of it at all—and her head was much fuller of a mingled desire to spite Simon and worry over Ian than of the king’s intentions.
Simon returned not long after Rhiannon had gone. He could not fly into a rage with his father, whom he found surrounded by another group of men fearful over a new batch of rumors. Ian was already gray with worry and fatigue, and Alinor, who had excluded all the servants from the solar lest they hear more than they should, was serving her guests herself with set teeth and lips tight with anxiety. It would have been better if Simon had followed his first impulse and gone to Geoffrey’s house to explode, but his second thought was that he must get to Court before his precious prize was stolen from him.
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