by Sandra Hill
“Herbert has been coughin’ like this fer days,” said his mother, with tears in her exhausted eyes.
“You should have come sooner, Mary. Now, Herbie, let us see what the problem is.” Using a fingertip dipped in honey, to make his intrusion more palatable, he examined the child’s mouth and throat. Soon, he was handing the mother a honey-and-cherry-bark syrup to alleviate the cough. “’Twould not hurt to put a little mead on your nipple when you nurse the mite, as well. The child will sleep more restfully.”
Mary gifted him a handwoven wool horse blanket.
Three more people were served by John and his “healing” arts while Ingrith waited. His payment for these services was a jug of Frankish wine, several ells of the transparent cloth he used in his beekeeping, and a kiss on the cheek by a nubile dairy maid with promise of more if he was interested, which he did not seem to be.
Ingrith could not help but be impressed with his knowledge and compassion. If she was not already half in love with the man, she would be now.
Finally, he was done and exhaling with relief. That was when he noticed her standing there.
“Oh, nay! Not you! Again!”
Not very encouraging to her plan.
“Are you stalking me?”
“Can a lady not seek out a man to talk?”
“Nay, nay, nay! No more of your kind of talking. The last time you ‘talked’ to me, you asked me…well, suffice it to say it took me a long time to recover.”
Good! I must affect him, after all. With a smile, she stepped closer. Come here, fly. Let me show you my spiderweb.
His gaze swept her body, taking in the clingy material. She could feel her nipples peak at his perusal and wondered if he could tell.
His survey snagged when passing over her chest.
Yea, he noticed.
Still, he resisted. “You will not bend me to your will, Ingrith. Do not even try.”
“I would not know how.” She could already see the tendrils of her web reaching out to him.
“Hah! That gown alone speaks for your intent.”
She did not try to deny his accusation, but instead shrugged. Her heart hammered against her ribs as she proceeded with her seduction, ill prepared as she was for such an activity.
“Do not step any closer, Ingrith.”
“Why are you staring at my lips?”
The edge of his mouth quirked, but then his face went bleak as he repeated what was now a familiar refrain, “I will not marry you.”
She was mystified and entranced by this silent sadness that came and went over his face. What was it that troubled him so?
At the same time, with their bodies almost touching, she could feel his heat and arousal, like an erotic cloud reaching out to her. His cheekbones, heightened in color, were like red flags of surrender. To her, leastways.
“You are attracted to me,” she insisted.
“Of course I am. I am a red-blooded male. But you are perilous to all I hold dear.”
“You treat your people for all their ailments. Why not me?”
That brought a full-fledged smile to his lips.
If he only knew what his smiles did to her!
“And what is your particular ailment, m’lady?” he inquired with a lazy drawl.
“I ache.”
He arched his brows.
“Here,” she said and put a hand to her lower belly.
“God help me,” he said on a moan, then opened his arms to her.
Sometimes spiders do not catch the fly…
John closed his eyes and shuddered as he held Ingrith in a tight embrace. How could something so wrong feel so right?
So aroused that he felt disoriented, he trembled with his efforts to maintain control. Ingrith’s eagerness excited him, without a doubt heightened by his long period of self-denial. But he must put a stop to this temptation.
“Ingrith. Sweetling.” He tried to set her away from him, but her arms were wrapped so tightly about his neck, like manacles, and…Good Lord! She was rubbing her breasts back and forth across his chest and making little mewling, catlike sounds of satisfaction. She had to be aware of his raging enthusiasm pressing into her abdomen.
“Stop!” he said firmly, prying her fingers off his neck and forcing her to stand an arm’s length away. With his hands on her shoulders, arms braced, he made her stand still. “This cannot happen.”
“Why?” she whimpered.
With a deep sigh of surrender, he told her, “I will tell you why. God help me, but I will tell you why.” He lowered his hands to her waist and lifted her to sit on his high stool.
He walked away a short distance, unable to speak at the look of passion, and disappointment, on her face.
“You know that I am the illegitimate son of the Earl of Gravely.”
She nodded. “What has that to do—”
He halted her further words with a raised hand. “My birth is the result of Steven of Gravely raping my mother.”
She gasped. “I did not know.”
“Not many people do. Steven was an evil man, Ingrith. Insane, if you must know. And I carry the same blood.”
“Oh, John, I carry the same blood as my father, who is arrogant beyond belief. And cruel in battle, I am told. And lustsome?” She rolled her eyes. “Needless to say…five wives speak for itself.”
John smiled sadly. “That is different. The despicable things my father did in his short life are evidence of a madness I have difficulty describing, and it wasn’t just in battle. Rape is the least of his sins. Murder, even of children and innocent women. Torture. Sodomy. God only knows what else. ’Tis said that his brother Elwinus entered a cloistered order of monks as a young boy due to the things he saw at the Gravely estate. Mayhap he experienced the insanity himself.”
“What is it that you are trying to tell me?”
“I am telling you that insanity runs in my blood, and I refuse…I absolutely refuse…to bring a child into this world with that prospect hanging over its head.”
Tears welled in her eyes. Pity, no doubt. Pity he could do without. He stiffened and raised his chin defiantly. “That is why I meet with Joanna on occasion. She is barren.”
“Why have you not married her? Leastways, you could ease your body on her without repercussions whenever your sap rises to overflowing.”
“My…my sap?”
“Is it because she is of a lower class?”
“I am still stuck on the rising sap.”
“Do not pretend that you do not understand. ’Tis when a man’s dangly part gets so filled with sap it must find relief or burst.”
She can’t be that gullible. Can she? “I have ne’er heard that theory afore, especially in reference to dangly part.”
She narrowed her eyes, trying to determine if he was mocking her.
He maintained a straight face, though he was in fact laughing inside.
“You did not answer my question. Why not marry Joanna?”
“I have asked Joanna to wed, and she declined.”
She flinched and closed her eyes for a moment, as if he had hit her.
“Joanna prefers her independent life in Jorvik. And she refuses to give up the trade her husband established to his greedy children.”
“I’m sorry…for you.”
“Do not be sorry for me,” he snapped. “I have told you, ours is merely a convenient affair.”
“No heart pangs involved?”
He smiled. “None at all.” The sadness on her face pulled at him. “I do not want to hurt you, Ingrith. ’Twould seem that bluntness is the only way I can make you understand.”
“I still do not understand, you fool.” She swiped at her eyes and slid off the stool. “Have you ever struck a child? Have you ever raped a woman? Do you feel an urge to do perverted things?”
“Only with you,” he said, then immediately regretted his levity.
“I cannot accept that you have bad blood. I just cannot.”
“Ask your sister Tyra’s hus
band. Adam the Healer. His stepfather Selik suffered sorely at my father’s hand. Not only did my father rape Selik’s first wife, but he also carried his infant son’s head about on a pike.”
Disgust finally seeped into Ingrith’s thick head, and she almost swooned on her feet. He put his hands on her upper arms to help her keep her balance.
“Now you see why I cannot be with you. I cannot risk pregnancy. You must not develop an attachment to me.”
“I fear it is already too late,” she said, gathering the skirt of her gunna in one hand. As she turned to leave, she told him, “I think I have fallen in love with you.”
CHAPTER TEN
In the battle of the sexes, men rarely win…
It was two days before John was within talking, or touching, distance of Ingrith. He was avoiding the too-tempting wench like a bad rash.
But she was determined, if nothing else. In fact, he was beginning to refer to her in his mind as “the Burr,” meaning that she stuck fast to someone or something until she got what she wanted. Why else had he ended up harboring a herd of orphans, including the king’s illegitimate son? The Burr, for sure.
Bolthor could probably create a great saga with that title, he thought with a silent grimace.
But she found him finally…well, trapped him…in the hall outside his bedchamber as he was about to go down for the evening meal, to be followed by an evening session in his bee shed. Work was his salvation.
He almost jumped out of his skin. “Ingrith! Why are you sneaking about, pouncing on me?”
“I did not pounce. I merely waited in the shadows until you came out.” She must have just come from the bath house, because her braid was damp with wet tendrils framing her flushed face. She was wringing her hands nervously.
He didn’t want to ponder why her face was flushed or why the usually unshakeable woman was now nervous. It no doubt boded ill for him.
“If I were pouncing, I would have barged into your bedchamber.”
Now there is a thought! “Could you not wait ’til I came down?”
“Nay. You are avoiding me.”
“And that does not tell you something?” Like…stay away! “Where is your chaperon?”
“Chaperon?”
“The gnome. He usually shadows you, to protect you from my lascivious intents. Little does the pestsome gnat know, I am the one needing protection.”
Her wringing hands were now fisted.
Holy saints! It was fun riling the woman.
“You are being mean to me.”
Mean to be kind. “Is it working?”
“Nay. I need to tell you something important…something I just learned, which you may not be aware of. For a certainty, I did not—”
His head shot up. “Is Loncaster here?”
“Of course not. Your guards would have sounded the horn. Besides, Ordulf would have been the one—”
“Not another secret that you neglected to share with me! Nay, that cannot be it. Your eye is not twitching.” He sighed deeply. “What is wrong now?”
“How can I tell you if you keep interrupting me? This is personal.”
“Uh-oh!”
“We should go into your bedchamber to discuss this.”
“We definitely should not go into my bedchamber.” Now would be the time for me to run. Fast.
“Why? Are you afraid of me?”
“Terrified.” Run, Hawk, run!
“Enough jesting!”
“Who is jesting?” If she licks her lips one more time, I just might…
She skirted around him to open his bedchamber door. Then she turned to glare at him in the middle of the corridor. “Well? Are you coming in?”
“Do I have to?”
She reached for his arm and dragged him in, then closed the door after them.
Under normal circumstances, he would be amused, but Ingrith was going too far. Being un-biddable was one thing, forcing her attention on him was quite another. He leaned back against the closed door, arms folded over his chest. “Get to it, Ingrith. I am hungry and would go down to eat. What feast are we having tonight, by the by?”
She ignored his sarcasm as she paced the small room, seeming to be struggling for the right words. “I was speaking to Katherine, and she told me there are ways to prevent conception.”
“What?” he shouted. He barely restrained himself from going over to shake the troublesome woman. “You dared discuss my problem with Bolthor’s wife. Bloody hell! The skald will be composing an ode to celibate men.”
“Of course I didn’t tell Katherine. We were speaking in general of women who bear too many children, to the point of death, and how convenient it would be if they could prevent a man’s seed from meeting fertile ground, at least on occasion.” She released a whooshy exhale after that long stretch of blather.
“I have ne’er in all my life had this kind of conversation with a woman.” He put his face in his hands and counted to ten, then confronted her. “I am aware of those herbal remedies. They may or may not work, usually not. I would not take the risk.”
Her face fell with disappointment.
“This is my problem, not yours.” He attempted to be gentle in his words when he would really like to throttle the wench for her interference.
“It is my problem when it prevents you from making love to me.”
Oh, good God, we are back to that forbidden subject.
“And if you say that you are not going to marry me again, I think I might just scream.”
He almost smiled…until she came out with another of her outrageous suggestions.
“Sometimes at the orphanage we rescue girls from brothels. They have told us…things.”
“What kinds of things?”
“Sex acts that do not involve…um, penetration,” she said quickly, as if she might not have the nerve if she hesitated.
Every single part of John’s body went on alert. Sex alert.
The kind that thickened the blood and hardened essential parts. He could swear he heard a buzzing in his ears…a buzzing that presaged surrender. This woman made him so damn angry…and aroused. A man could take only so much.
“So be it!” he said. “You want to make love, without intercourse? We will, but only under my conditions.”
“What conditions?” she asked, hesitantly.
But her hesitation had come too late. He was the one determined now. “You will do everything I order. Everything. Without question.”
“But—”
“And once you agree, there will be no going back.”
“But—”
“Everything. No matter if it is coarse, rude, wet, noisy, brazen, or wanton. Sex play…good sex play…is not for the faint of heart.”
“Whaaat? John, you know that I am a woman in control above all things. It would be nigh impossible for me to do such things without question.”
He shrugged. “That is precisely what I would ask you to hand over. Control. In the bedplay only. You may rule the kitchen roost as you will. Cock-a-doodle-do all you want, but in my bedchamber the rules are mine.”
Her chin rose haughtily. There was no way that this prideful woman would give him such power.
“Agreed.”
“What?” he choked out. “Ingrith, I offer you one last chance for escape. You are nobly born. Women of your class do not engage in such activities.”
“Noblewomen do not engage in illicit liaisons?”
First dangly parts and rising sap. Now liaisons. Where does she get this information? “Not when they are virgins!” He stared at her for a long moment. “I know I asked before, but you are a virgin, aren’t you?”
“Yea, I am. A thirty-one-year-old virgin! And I am damn tired of it! Like an albatross, my maidenhead is.”
He would have burst out laughing, but this situation was becoming nigh ridiculous, and not in a humorous way. Enough! Time to scare the wench. Force her to stop this nonsense.
He steepled his fingers and pinioned her with a delibera
tely lecherous gaze.
She did not waver. The willful witch!
“Despite all caution, your virtue would be forfeit.”
“Oh, please! Get on with it!”
The irksome woman was driving him barmy! If she thought to take the reins in this ride, she was in for a jolt.
“Very well. Take off your clothes. All of them. Slowly.”
He bit his bottom lip to keep from smiling and wondered how quickly she would run away, calling him every foul name in her vast vocabulary.
Instead, she surprised the spit out of him.
Slowly, very slowly, she took off every bit of clothing, including her shoes and hose. She stood before him in all her naked glory with a full-body blush and squared soldiers. A sex siren off to war.
She was tall…long-waisted and long-legged, with many intriguing curves to soften the bones. Little hills and valleys that begged exploration. Her breasts were high and that unusual pale rose flesh color. Her buttocks were still firm…no sag at all, which was surprising for a woman her age. But then she had not borne any children which usually caused the belly to go soft and the bottom to expand. In his experience, and it defied his understanding, happily married men loved those marks on their women.
“Unbraid your hair and finger comb it out.”
She did as he asked, the pose causing her breasts to lift in the most enticing manner. When she was done, Ingrith stared at him, nervously awaiting his response.
How could he tell her now that it was all a jest? A tactic meant to prove how unsuitable she was for this kind of wicked bedsport.
Instead, the joke was on him.
He fought a silent battle to be chivalrous…and lost. He was powerless to resist the intense attraction that blossomed between them, as it had from the first she entered his keep.
“Well? Are you going to stand there like a turnip?” she demanded, hands on hips. “Do you yield?”
Heat ignited, then unfurled to all the extremities of his long cold body. He never knew that surrender could be such a sweet burn.
She was a fast learner…
For the first time in her life, Princess Ingrith of Stoneheim, a woman of sensible…some might say priggish…nature, stood before a man, naked.