Enchanted

by Elizabeth Lowell

  That was welcome news to Erik, who had been afraid Simon would simply ignore his icy wife but for the duty of providing sons to fight for his lord and brother, the Glendruid Wolf. That kind of cold, practical liaison would result in deadly danger. Erik didn’t know why, but he knew it was truth. It was his gift to see such patterns where others saw only unconnected events.

  “I will leave you to compliment your lady in peace,” Erik said.

  “Wise of you.”

  Ariane glanced at Simon. He was smiling.

  And he was deadly serious.

  Erik withdrew, hiding his own smile of satisfaction.

  “That was unnecessary,” she said in a low voice.

  “It was very necessary,” Simon said.

  “Why? What harm is there in an exchange of courtly compliments?”

  Simon stepped toward Ariane. She caught herself just before she stepped back. Even so, Simon saw her reflexive flinching away.

  “The harm,” he said softly, savagely, “is in the fact that you flinch at my least movement, yet fawn over Erik as though bent on seducing him.”

  “I never—”

  “The harm,” interrupted Simon, “is in your beauty. Men come to you like dogs after a bitch in heat, helpless to control their own lust.”

  Ariane’s mouth opened in shock. “That’s not—”

  He overrode her words without a pause.

  “The harm, dear wife, is that a compliment that begins with your eyes soon ends with comparing your lips to a bud on the brink of flowering.”

  A small shiver of memory went through Ariane.

  “The harm—” Simon continued coolly.

  “You made me feel like that,” she said without thinking. “A bud that was full of sweetness.”

  Though soft, Ariane’s words cut off the rising anger in Simon. He looked at her mouth, tender as a petal, sweet as nectar, the unblemished pink of a wild rose just before it blooms.

  Dominic hailed Simon from the head of the room. If Simon heard, he failed to turn away from his study of Ariane’s lips.

  “Simon,” she whispered. “Lord Dominic calls you.”

  Simon ignored Ariane’s words as he had ignored his brother’s greeting.

  “Last night,” Simon said huskily, “your mouth was just like a tightly furled bud. The feel of you slowly opening to my kiss made my head spin as wine never has.”

  The narrowed, glittering darkness of Simon’s eyes was both warning and lure to Ariane.

  “When you finally did open,” Simon said, “I knew how a bee feels when it slides between fragrant petals and sips nectar from the heart of the flower.”

  Breath wedged in Ariane’s chest as Simon’s words vividly recalled the sweet glide of tongue over tongue, the taste of him spreading through her mouth, making her weak with a longing she couldn’t name.

  Without knowing it, she whispered her husband’s name.

  “Aye,” Simon said. “You remember it, too. Soon you will open for me in a different way, and the honey of your desire will be the nectar that drenches me.”

  A shimmer of heat went through Ariane. It was startling and pleasurable.

  “But until that day,” Simon continued smoothly, “you will trade compliments only with me, for I am the only bee whose sweet sting your petals will ever know.”

  Ariane opened her mouth to answer. Nothing came out but a sound that could have been Simon’s name. She licked lips that were suddenly dry.

  “You tempt me without mercy,” Simon said fiercely beneath his breath. “Would that I could do the same to you.”

  He turned with startling speed and strode toward Dominic, leaving Ariane to the solace of the harp she held so tightly against her breasts.

  10

  “’Tis a beautiful day, lady,” Blanche said. “Almost worth the six days of storm that came before.”

  A sound like a cascading sigh came from the harp Ariane held. The notes were as haunted as her eyes. Ariane’s fingers continued their slow drawing over the harp while Blanche set aside the comb and began braiding her lady’s hair.

  Ariane hardly noticed Blanche’s fingers. She was caught between nightmare and unnervingly sweet memories of Simon’s kiss.

  Six days a wife.

  Tonight will be the seventh night.

  “’Tis a blessing the weather has changed,” Blanche muttered as she braided Ariane’s long hair. “The knights are wild to be hunting. Or wenching. The cotters’ daughters are hiding in with the swine.”

  Will this be the night Simon finally comes to my bedchamber again?

  Or will he let my nerves string ever tighter as I wait for him to stalk to my bed, drag my nightdress up my legs and hammer within me until I bleed?

  Ariane forced herself to breathe.

  What a pity one cannot conceive babes with a kiss.

  Her hands changed on the harp as she remembered the sweet restraint and gliding caress of Simon’s mouth.

  If he remembered her kiss with equal favor, it didn’t show in his manner. Since the morning after their marriage, Simon had been polite to Ariane and no more.

  I don’t want any more from him.

  It was a lie, and Ariane knew it.

  Yet it was also the truth, and she knew that too.

  She wanted Simon’s kisses, his gentle touches, his smiles. She didn’t want the passion that ran through his blood like lightning through a storm, making his eyes both dark and glittery at once. She was frightened of the male strength that so easily could overwhelm her, holding her helpless while he forced her body to admit his seed.

  Have a care how you mock me, else I will take what God and king have given to me, and to hell with your virginal fears.

  “Lady?” Blanche asked.

  Ariane blinked. The tone of her handmaiden’s voice told Ariane that she had been called more than once.

  “Yes?” Ariane asked.

  “Does your hair suit you?”

  “Yes.”

  With a grimace Blanche set aside the comb. Ariane hadn’t so much as glanced at her reflection in the brass mirror.

  “If I had your face and form,” Blanche said, “I’d not hide away up in my room like a nun in her cloister.”

  “Then would that we could trade forms,” Ariane muttered, “as Lord Erik and his wolfhound are reputed to do upon a full moon.”

  Blanche shuddered and crossed herself hurriedly.

  “Don’t be such a goose,” Ariane said. “Lord Erik has been very kind to us.”

  “They say Satan is charming, too.”

  “Satan doesn’t wear the cross of a true believer.”

  “Lord Erik does?”

  “Yes.”

  Blanche’s expression showed her disbelief.

  “Ask the chaplain of Stone Ring Keep if you don’t believe me,” Ariane said.

  Her voice was as curt as the staccato notes she plucked from the harp.

  “Will you breakfast in your bedchamber again?” Blanche asked carefully.

  Ariane was on the point of agreeing when restlessness overcame her. She realized that she was tired of her self-imposed exile from the keep’s life. Abruptly she stood up, harp in hand.

  “Nay,” Ariane said. “I will breakfast in the great hall.”

  Blanche’s pale eyes widened, but she said only, “As you wish.”

  Ariane started for the door, then stopped. She set aside her harp and began impatiently unlacing the dress she had chosen to wear this morning. The cloth’s mauve folds and pink trimming at cuff and hem no longer pleased her.

  “Bring me the dress I was married in,” Ariane said.

  “That one? Why?”

  “It pleases me more than my other clothes.”

  With a sideways glance at her unpredictable lady, Blanche went to the wardrobe that held the few dresses Ariane had brought with her from Blackthorne Keep.

  “A vexed odd fabric,” Blanche muttered.

  She held the strange cloth no more closely than she had to in order to bri
ng the dress to her mistress.

  “Odd? How so?” Ariane asked.

  “The weaving looks soft as a cloud and feels rough as thistle leaves. I don’t see how you can bear to have it against your skin, even to please the Learned.”

  Startled, Ariane gave her handmaiden a long look.

  “Rough?” Ariane said in disbelief. “Why, the dress is softer than the finest goosedown.”

  “Vexed odd goosedown,” Blanche muttered beneath her breath.

  Gingerly she held out the violet cloth with its lush silver threads woven through in disconcerting patterns, like leashed lightning playing through an amethyst storm. With scant patience, she waited for Ariane to take the dress.

  For once, Blanche didn’t insist on helping her mistress with the laces. Nor was any help needed. The dress all but laced itself, needing little help from Ariane’s quick fingers.

  That was one of the things that appealed to Ariane about the Learned gift; she didn’t have to endure unwanted hands on her body in order to get dressed. The fabric also turned aside stains with the ease of a duck shedding water.

  “I wonder how the weaving was accomplished,” Ariane said, running the backs of her fingers over the cloth. “The threads are so fine I can barely distinguish them.”

  “’Tis said the most expensive silk is like that.”

  “Nay. My father bought many bolts of silk from knights who had fought the Saracen. None of the cloth was this soft. None was as cleverly woven.”

  Yet even as Ariane stroked the fabric, she was careful not to look into its depths where light and shadow intertwined. The memory of Simon’s kiss was unsettling enough. She didn’t need the vision of a woman arched in passion beneath a warrior’s caresses to further disturb her peace of mind.

  Harp in hand, silver-trimmed dress seething gently around her ankles, Ariane set off for the great hall. The keep was alive with the sounds of servants. As she made her way toward the hall, Ariane heard them calling back and forth, talking of the fine day after the wild storm and of the canny swine that had once again escaped Ethelrod’s pen.

  The fire in the great hall’s hearth leaped high and golden. Simon and Dominic were lounging nearby. The cat known as His Laziness was draped around Simon’s neck like a leftover storm cloud. Leather hawking gauntlets lay on the table. From the swooping motions of the men’s hands, it appeared that they were discussing the merits of hunting waterfowl with falcons of various sizes.

  Other than a polite nod when Ariane entered the room, Simon made no move to join her.

  Ariane was both relieved and…vexed. Only then did she admit to herself that she had been hoping for a chance to talk with Simon.

  ’Tis just as well he isn’t interested in me, Ariane told herself. How do I ask my husband if he plans to force me tonight or some other night entirely?

  With an impatient word under her breath, Ariane shoved aside the fears that had neither outlet nor encouragement. Since their disastrous wedding night, Simon had ignored his wife except to be polite when their paths crossed in the keep.

  Meg was sitting along one side of the big table where the lords and ladies of the Disputed Lands normally took their meals. Instead of food, Meg had an array of lotions, balms, potions, tinctures and creams spread in front of her. Next to her sat Amber. The combination of flame-colored hair next to gold was arresting against the grey stone walls.

  “Cassandra says this works very well against diseases caused by chill,” Amber said. “Though, for mild cases, some Learned healers prefer nettle harvested at the height of summer to berries taken from Lucifer’s ear.”

  Meg picked up a pot, dipped her finger briefly into it, and rubbed a bit of the cream between her thumb and forefinger. When the cream was as warm as her body, she held her fingers up to her nose, sniffed carefully, tasted lightly, and nodded.

  Quietly Ariane sat down nearby. Simon’s squire—a boy barely old enough to grow a wretched shadow of a beard—stepped forward instantly with a plate of cold meats, fruits, cheeses, breads and a mug of fragrant tea.

  “Thank you, Edward,” Ariane said, surprised.

  “It is my pleasure to serve my lord’s lady,” the boy said carefully.

  Edward glanced aside at Simon, received a fractional nod, and retreated hastily.

  It was clear that Simon was overseeing Ariane’s breakfast. As she looked at the plate again, she understood something else—Simon must have been monitoring her food for the past six days.

  There wasn’t one item on the plate that she didn’t like. The tea itself was a subtle blend of rose hips and chamomile that Ariane had declared more than once was very much to her taste.

  Under Simon’s watchful black eyes, Ariane set aside her harp and began to eat.

  “Thank our Lord,” Dominic muttered as he saw the harp leave Ariane’s hands. “The lady won’t be making our falcons weep with her sad tunes.”

  Simon merely glanced from Ariane to his own gyrfalcon waiting on a perch along the wall of the great hall. Hooded, patient, Skylance waited with other birds of prey arrayed on perches in the hall. Occasionally a falcon shifted and flared its wings. The movements made bells jangle on the ends of leather jesses wrapped around the falcons’ slender, cool legs.

  Turning away, Simon resumed stroking the cat whose head was tucked along the right side of his neck. The motion of Simon’s arm caused the sleeve of his shirt to fall away from his arm, revealing the scarlet line of healing flesh across his biceps.

  “Meg’s balm has healed you quickly from your, ah, accident,” Dominic said.

  Though the Glendruid Wolf’s voice was low, Simon knew his brother well enough to understand that Dominic didn’t believe the story of how Simon had gotten the cut across his left arm.

  “Aye,” Simon said. “Meg is very skilled.”

  “Odd that you were so clumsy. Tell me again how it happened.”

  A black look was Simon’s only answer.

  “Ah, it comes back to me now,” Dominic said. “You had too much wine, you were showing your bride how to flip the dagger end over end, and the blade sliced you. Is that how it went?”

  Simon shrugged and began demolishing an apple with neat, flashing bites.

  “A pretty story,” Dominic said judiciously, “but it is time to speak the truth to your lord.”

  “What passes between a man and his bride on their wedding night belongs to them, and only to them.”

  “Not when the death of one or the other would bring calamity to Blackthorne Keep,” Dominic retorted.

  “We live,” Simon said dryly.

  “And the bridal sheets were duly stained. By your blood, I presume?”

  Silence.

  “Simon.”

  The Glendruid Wolf’s voice was low, urgent. So was his posture as he leaned toward his brother.

  “My questions aren’t idle,” Dominic said flatly. “Each night Meg dreams Glendruid dreams. Each night her dreams are more frightening.”

  Simon’s mouth became a line as thin as the scarlet wound across his arm. For long moments he made no motion but to stroke His Laziness, increasing the cat’s ecstatic purring.

  “Is Ariane your wife in deed as well as in ceremony?” Dominic asked bluntly.

  Simon’s fingers paused, then resumed their caresses.

  “No,” he said succinctly.

  Dominic cursed in the language of the Saracens.

  “What happened?” Dominic asked.

  “My wife is as cold as a northern sea.”

  “She refused you?”

  A narrow, bleak smile changed the line of Simon’s mouth, but the gentleness of his hand on the grey cat never varied.

  “She refused me,” Simon agreed.

  “Why?”

  “She said she would rather die than lie beneath a man.”

  “Then place her on top,” Dominic said impatiently.

  “I have it in mind.”

  Dominic waited.

  Simon said no more.

  “How wer
e you wounded?” Dominic demanded.

  Though the Glendruid Wolf’s tone was insistent, it carried no farther than the two men.

  “With a dagger,” Simon said.

  “Who was holding it?” retorted Dominic.

  “My wife.”

  It was what Dominic had suspected, but hearing the truth spoken was somehow shocking.

  “She truly tried to kill you?” Dominic asked.

  Simon shrugged.

  “God’s teeth,” Dominic muttered. “No wonder you haven’t sought her bed again. It would be enough to take the steel from even the stoutest sword.”

  “Would that it had that effect,” Simon said beneath his breath.

  “What?”

  “Would that my wife’s dagger could take the steel from my sword. But it can’t. I fear my temper if she refuses me again.”

  Dominic’s black eyebrows rose. Whether on the battlefield or in the bedchamber, Simon’s self-control was the envy of many a knight.

  “That is why you sleep alone?” Dominic asked.

  “Aye. And now she is wearing that witchy dress once more,” Simon said. “God’s teeth, but I would love to get my hands beneath it.”

  Dominic looked at his brother’s taut features and picked his words very carefully before he spoke.

  “Do you think she prefers another man?” Dominic asked.

  “Not if she wishes to live.”

  The deadly coolness of Simon’s voice warned Dominic that even a brother and a lord combined had better tread warily around the subject of Ariane’s desires. Dominic had not seen Simon so intense since he had pursued Marie’s artfully swaying hips between battlefield campfires that burned no less hotly than Simon himself.

  Abruptly Simon cursed and some of the savagery left his eyes. A flick of the cat’s tail under Simon’s nose reminded him of his true mission in life—making His Laziness purr.

  “No,” Simon said quietly. “Ariane loves no man. In some ways it might be easier if she did. I could kill him.”

  Dominic smiled sardonically. “Then Lady Ariane is like some of the sultan’s harem. She prefers the touch of her own sex.”

  “Nay. Ariane prefers no touch at all. Even in the bath, no one attends her.”