Rosehaven

by Catherine Coulter

  Severin turned his head one last time to see the place of his birth. Langthorne would regain its power in the region, he would see to it. Thurston was rubbing his hands together, for now he was married, and evidently he had enjoyed the pleasures of the marriage bed. Hastings had spoken privately to Blanche and been pleased. “Everything will go well. You spoke to Thurston, Severin? You told him to be gentle and kind with his bride?”

  Severin was frowning. “Aye, I did tell him that. He told me just before we left that I had been wrong in my advice. Then he gave me this huge smile and said that his bride was a tigress and she wanted no gentleness from him.”

  Hastings stared at her husband. “I don’t understand.”

  “There are some ladies, Hastings, who enjoy a man who’s fierce with them, a man who enjoys rough play, a man who holds them down and pretends to conquer them. Your sweet-faced, gentle Blanche is one of these women. He said she was beyond wild even before he tore through her maidenhead. He said after he did that, she mounted him, pummeling him, nearly killing him by dawn.”

  “I had not thought of this. Mayhap you will explain this wildness to me, Severin.”

  “I think not, sweeting. All you are to remember is that when we are alone, you are free to do whatever you wish to, save gullet me with a knife if you happen to be angry with me.”

  She said nothing to that, merely stared through Marella’s ears, deep in thought. Severin dug his heels into his horse’s sides and rode to the head of his men.

  Oxborough Castle, Five days later

  “We found Sir Roger and Glenda within two hours of their escape from Langthorne,” Gwent was telling everyone in the great hall, clearly enjoying himself. Only Severin was already privy to the details, and he had told Gwent to keep all those delicious details to himself until he could entertain all their people. Hastings could see why he had wished to wait. He had an excellent audience. He cleared his throat again. “Sir Roger had tried to cover their trail, but he is inept, the poor whoreson.” Gwent spat into the clean rushes, looked up in horror at Hastings, then quickly said, “The girl Glenda had wrapped all the clothes she could steal in an old blanket. She tried to tell me that it was just the rags you had allowed her, Severin. Sir Roger believed we would kill him. I will say this, he didn’t whine like I expected him to. Nay, he sat straight on his horse and appeared to accept his death. When I asked him to give me the pouch of money, he stared at me. He shook his head. He swore he hadn’t taken it. Then he turned pale. He looked to the girl and merely held out his hand.”

  Gwent paused a moment to drink from his wine goblet. Everyone was attending him. There wasn’t a sound in the great hall of Oxborough. He cleared his throat, this time speaking directly to Lady Moraine. “The girl Glenda said she didn’t have any pouch. She didn’t know what he was talking about. I merely took that stuffed dirty blanket from her and threw it to the ground. I opened it and kicked all the clothes away. And there was the pouch, wrapped in a shift.”

  He paused and speared a piece of pork onto his knife. Lady Moraine placed her hand lightly on his forearm. “What happened, Gwent? Come, you have held it all in for far too long. My beloved son would not tell me anything. Tell us now.”

  Gwent almost belched, but he managed to hold it in. Not in Lady Moraine’s face, at least he knew not to do that. He cleared his throat yet again. “I dally not, my lady, it’s just that what followed is best not told in your hearing.”

  Lady Moraine lifted her eating knife and gently pressed the point against Gwent’s neck, a clean neck since he had bathed just that afternoon, bless Saint Sebastian’s arrow-pierced body. Gwent said quickly, “I stripped her naked just as Lord Severin had done. I took all the clothes and the pouch and brought them back to Langthorne. My men and I left her there with Sir Roger just staring down at her. The men would have taken her, but I did not allow it. No, we just left her there in the middle of the road. There was no love or lust in Sir Roger’s eyes, my lady, when he looked down at her. None at all. I know not what happened, but I imagine that Sir Roger left her there.”

  “You stripped off her shoes, Gwent?” Lady Moraine asked, leaning close.

  “Aye, my lady, every stitch of covering.”

  “That is good. You remember that Glenda took my shoes and forced me into the forest.”

  Gwent laughed and rubbed his hands together. “A fitting punishment for her then, my lady.”

  And even as Hastings listened, laughed, and nodded with approval, she wasn’t paying them much attention now. She was thinking instead of Lady Blanche. She was wondering how Lady Blanche knew about this wildness, how she, a lady, had known that she wanted to attack her husband and be attacked by him. It was confusing.

  When she was at her bath a good hour later, she was still thinking of Lady Blanche. She turned to Dame Agnes. “We mayhap need Alice and Belle.”

  “Ah,” said Dame Agnes with a goodly deal of satisfaction. “Your lord experiments, does he?”

  “Aye, but that is not what I wish to ask about. You see, Sir Thurston’s bride wanted rough play; she was fierce and was wild even when she was still a virgin. Afterward, she was wilder still. I have never heard of this. I do not understand it. And I want to.”

  Dame Agnes merely nodded. She left the bedchamber to return shortly with Alice. “We could not find Belle. Gwent said she was with the blacksmith, Old Morric, that the man is nearly dead she has drained him of so much of his vigor and seed. I have told Alice what you said. She said this is very common, that sometimes ladies—”

  Alice cleared her throat, took the thick sponge from Dame Agnes, and began to rub soap over Hastings’s back. “Some men think their wives should lie on their backs, close their eyes, and open their legs. That is all these men expect, all they want. Some men, though, obviously like this Sir Thurston and your Lord Severin, are more flexible in their views. I daresay if you were to mount your husband, even tie his hands to the headboard, even take him in your mouth, he would swoon with the pleasure of it.”

  “What do you mean, take him in my mouth? What him?”

  “Don’t be obtuse, Hastings. His rod,” Dame Agnes said.

  “Oh. I have done that once. I thought he would expire. You are right. It appeared to be something a man would beg for.”

  “Hmmm,” Dame Agnes said. “Things are progressing well. You will simply learn this wildness, Hastings. It is not a sin; it could bring you great pleasure if you let your husband know that you might enjoy it.”

  “I could not,” Hastings said. “I could not. He would laugh at me. He would think—”

  “What he would think,” Severin said from the doorway, standing there all tall and relaxed, his eyes as dark as the night, his arms crossed over his chest, “is that your women can leave you now.”

  Alice handed him the soapy sponge as she passed him. She was whistling. Dame Agnes merely looked as satisfied as MacDear when he had baked a pheasant to perfection.

  Severin didn’t move until he was alone with her. Slowly, he turned to shut the door to the bedchamber. He turned the key in the lock. When he turned to face her again, Hastings was sitting in her bathwater, feeling like a rabbit in the sights of a hunter’s arrow.

  “You should have asked me if you wanted to know more about this rough play, Hastings.”

  “I did but you would not tell me anything.”

  “I still won’t, but I will show you.” He held out his hand to her. Slowly, she rose in her bathwater and he held her there. “Stand there for a moment, I would look at you.”

  “The water is chilled.”

  Slowly, reluctantly, he handed her a drying cloth. He couldn’t wait to get her onto the bed.

  “Mayhap this wildness isn’t really me, Severin.”

  He merely grunted, thinking if she were any wilder, he would be a very happy dead man. When she was dry, when she turned to face him, he was standing naked by the bed, smiling at her, his hand held out. “Drop the drying cloth and come here. We will soon see just how much
of this wildness is in your blood.”

  “How will you know? Will I shriek and writhe about? Must I draw your blood?”

  “Nay, you will mount me and I will let you plunder me.”

  She looked at him very straightly, dropped the towel, and said, “And after I have plundered you, may I take you in my mouth again?”

  She thought he would leap on her, but he managed to hold himself back. He was breathing fast and hard. His man’s sex was ready for her, she knew that, but it was more than that, it was the words she’d just said to him.

  She gave him a siren’s smile and walked toward him.

  18

  THE HEALER FELT LADY MORAINE’S HEAD, HER LONG narrow fingers gentle and light, covering every bit of her skull. “Ah,” she said, pressed Lady Moraine’s head back, and looked closely into her eyes. She pulled up the eyelids and looked some more. She hummed as she smoothed her fingers over Lady Moraine’s ears, twisting and turning them, pulling them away from her head and peering inside.

  Hastings began to fidget.

  Lady Moraine did nothing at all, merely stroked Alfred’s length in long, slow strokes. He was hanging over her lap, purring so loudly Hastings wondered if it didn’t distract the Healer.

  Evidently not.

  The Healer finally turned to Hastings and said simply, “I am the most skilled healer in all of Britain. The potion I gave your husband’s mother has cleared out the clogged pathways in her brain and balanced her humors once again.”

  Lady Moraine cleared her throat even as she petted Alfred, who was now purring so loudly she had to speak louder than normal. “Healer, I thank you. Will I take your potion the rest of my days?”

  “Aye, my lady, I think it wise. I do not know if the potion has permanently removed all the clogging from your brain or if it will return if you cease the potion.”

  “I will take it even when I am on my deathbed.”

  “Aye, you want to be full-witted when you prepare to leave this earth. Now, Hastings told me that one of the wounds on your left foot hasn’t healed properly.”

  Alfred had to leave the goddess, though it was obvious he didn’t want to. Hastings hadn’t realized her mother-in-law was so strong. She actually lifted Alfred and set him on the cottage floor. His huge tail whipped the air. He meowed loudly, then nudged over his bowl with his nose, sending it careening out the front of the cottage.

  The Healer laughed even as she lifted Lady Moraine’s foot and closely examined it. She felt every toe, pulling them apart to peer closely between them. The Healer said, “Does this hurt, lady? No? Very good. Ah, here is the problem. Just a pinch of patel root and saffron strands mixed in a bit of hot water will heal this. Ah, lady, you clean well between your toes. This is good. It keeps lice and ticks away.” She looked to see Alfred, looking ready to leap at Hastings, adding, “It will not, however, keep Alfred at bay.”

  Alfred leapt. Hastings staggered backward, clutching the cat in her arms.

  When Hastings and Lady Moraine left the Healer, after giving her three fresh pheasants for her cook pot, two of them for Alfred, Gwent and his two men did not at first react. They were staring at Alfred, who did at that moment look like the Devil’s familiar. He was seated in the open doorway of the cottage, nearly as tall as Edgar the wolfhound, cleaning his teeth with the claws of his left paw.

  “That beast came from a witch’s brew,” he said under his breath, but Alfred snapped his tail hair, stared hard at Gwent, and looked very pleased with himself when Gwent jumped a good two feet into the air.

  “That damnable beast,” Gwent yelled, angry with himself for reacting so strongly. One of the men dared to laugh. Gwent turned on him, giving him so mean a look that the man paled and shrank down in his saddle.

  “You are well, Lady Moraine?” he asked, as he assisted her into her palfrey’s saddle.

  “I will remain sane, Gwent, and thus able to give my son endless advice on the running of Oxborough. What think you of that?”

  Gwent smiled widely. “I believe Lord Severin will be so pleased we will have a feast to celebrate. As for advice, lady, you will have to contend with Hastings.”

  “I will never contend with Hastings. She is the most perfect of daughters.”

  Hastings blinked at that, opened her mouth to stammer some sort of profound delight, when Lady Moraine added, “Then again, Gwent, she is very young and doubtless needs my advice more than does my son. I saw him frowning over naught just this morning. What had she done to bring that frown to his beautiful face? I will find out and teach her.”

  “You will have to contend with Dame Agnes and Alice, my lady,” Hastings said, and laughed. “Aye, they have endless advice, and I vow that much of it pleases me.” She laughed again.

  Lady Moraine waved good-bye to Alfred, lightly kicked her heels into her palfrey’s sides, and laughed over her shoulder at Gwent, who was still looking at the damned cat, who was now waving its huge paw. The Healer stood in the open doorway, her arms crossed over her chest, just staring at them.

  He shook his head. “Nothing is as it should be in this place.”

  The ride back to Oxborough took only fifteen minutes. There were dark clouds lowered in the sky, the air was thick and cooling rapidly. The men didn’t want to get wet, but Hastings wasn’t uncomfortable, nor did she worry about the rain pouring down, as it would, surely, in the next few minutes. No, she was thinking of her husband, blessing again Dame Agnes and Alice, who had told her how to deal with a man.

  She had dealt with him very well the previous night. He’d let her do just as she pleased, as he had promised. She had explored his hard body, tracing each of the scars with a light touch, then kissing each of them, spending the most time on the scar that had slashed the inside of his right thigh. That thigh was thick, covered with a light furring of black hair, and she loved to knead the muscles, to stroke him as Lady Moraine had done Alfred.

  When she had loved him with her mouth, he had bowed off the bed, moaning and thrashing until she was heady with success. She did not care that she received no pleasure, for his had peaked into such intense release that she had found herself drawn into it, watching him as he shook and twisted, then freezing with the utter force of his release. And she thought, as she saw his dark eyes fix on her face with unleashed wildness, that surely he was a man to love, a man to protect, a man to trust, for all her life.

  He had grabbed her waist and pulled her down close to his face. He had held her there until he could breathe and speak again.

  “Think you to control me?”

  “Nay, I think to enjoy your pleasure.”

  “I gave you nothing, yet you smile at me and you still caress me with your hand on my shoulder. I do not understand you, Hastings.”

  “Must I be as carnal as a man all the time?”

  “Aye,” he said, his voice stark and deep. He pulled her onto her back and didn’t leave her until she had moaned into his mouth.

  Hastings shook slightly with the power of that memory. She imagined that she would renew that powerful memory at least once a week for the rest of her life. Mayhap fewer days than an entire week. She felt a stab of sheer lust when she pictured him yet again on his back, his man’s rod in her mouth. A storm could blow in from the sea and it wouldn’t gain her attention.

  She heard a laugh and turned to see Lady Moraine place her hand on Gwent’s arm as he pulled his horse closer to her palfrey. “Alfred is just a cat, Gwent, not a monster, though he does purr louder than a man snores.”

  And Hastings watched Gwent and Lady Moraine, watched them ride together ahead of her and the two other men, heard them laughing, saw Gwent reach out quickly to grab her palfrey’s reins when the mare stumbled. She prayed with everything in her that the Healer was right, that Severin’s mother was well again, that her madness had disappeared with the Healer’s potion.

  Then she saw her husband, garbed only in a loin cloth, working side by side with twenty men on the eastern wall of Oxborough. Sweat glistened off h
is chest and arms, his dark hair was plastered to his head, and she wanted to throw herself against him and ask him, very quietly, if he would come with her to create more of the wildness of the night before, if he would let her take him again as she wished.

  She sighed, knowing he could not leave his men. Unless the rain came down in torrents. She closed her eyes a moment and prayed hard. When she looked up again, she swallowed. He looked hard and lean and healthy, a man with strength, a man with a wife who very much appreciated him. By Saint Catherine’s knees, she prayed that one day he would come to feel about her the way she felt about him. She shook her head, leaning closer to Marella’s neck. No, she couldn’t love him. It wasn’t done. Theirs had been like most marriages, fashioned of money and possessions and power. They each had a role to play. It was just that there were some roles she enjoyed playing more than others.

  She thought again of looking down at his face even as she moved over him, and shuddered with the memory of those minutes. She did not think, though, that she had shown true wildness in her blood when he had brought her to pleasure. She had not bitten him or raked his back with her short fingernails. She had just yelled a bit, as she always did. As for Severin, she did not know how he could ever be wilder than he seemed to be naturally.

  Perhaps she would ask Dame Agnes and Alice about this. But it wasn’t quite time. Severin waved to her and she waved back. They rode into the inner bailey and she gave Marella over to Tuggle, who immediately crooned a litany of strange sounds to Marella, who butted her head into his chest.

  A bit later she saw Dame Agnes with Lady Moraine and—what was that all about?—there was Alice with Gwent. Now, what was Alice saying to him? Was it more about this wildness in the blood? Aye, she thought, the previous night had been a revelation—but was it really a revelation or merely another diversion that men and women shared? She would see.