Then whenever his job was done and he left these cursed walls and left her to mother their child, he would know that each time she looked at their offspring, she would remember the hours of passion in his arms. And for her solace, he would teach her to love herself. He would teach her to fondle her ripe nipples and plunder her succulent cunt as she pined for the loss of the lover whom she adored and who had been sent back to the world once more without her, for the price of retaining her silk, her wool and her gold.
Chapter Three
Just as Elise would have fallen to sleep, pounding at her door shook her from her doze. She stretched and halted. Her body ached, her muscles crying from the exertion of coupling with the man whose massive arms and hands had wound around her like iron chains.
The pounding grew louder and more insistent.
“Simon,” she whispered, trying to lift one of his arms, “let me answer the door.”
Compliant, he released her suddenly with arms and fingers opening wide, as if she had contracted the plague. The gesture stung, and she stumbled as she rose on shaking limbs.
“A moment, please,” she told her caller, walked to her wardrobe and pulled a heavy night rail from the neat stack. Tying the neck sash, she glanced at Simon who now sat up, the copious covers of the bed dishevelled in heaps about his naked body. He reached up and pulled a hanging between him and the alcove doorway then laid a finger atop his lips. His silence might help, but in truth, if anyone besides her trusted maid or Cleve knew that he had come here, if anyone suspected what they had done here, his life and hers might ultimately be forfeit, no matter what her husband had ordered.
She stepped through to her husband’s bedroom towards the massive wooden door. Alphonse still slept, and that made her breathe more easily. She shook back her waist-length locks and swung the heavy oak wide. Boldness was the mode to keep her castle’s serfs well away from the truth.
Cleve Faulk stood there—and at his feet, rising no higher than his waist, stood Simon’s rainbow-clad little man. No taller than her waist, he stared up at her rolling stones in one hand and twirling a tiny sling in the other.
He grinned at Elise, and she stared at the bright line of his white teeth. Simon had posted him here as protection most likely. Elise wondered if the tall Oriental stood at Simon’s door downstairs. That man seemed a stronger guard. This smaller one gave her pause. For at his size, what he could do with that sling to waylay someone?
Cleve must have him insignificant, too, because he glanced down at the tiny creature, disgust curling his lip. “I told you go away!”
But the dwarf gazed up serenely and silently shook his head.
“Cleve,” Elise brought his attention to her. “What will you?”
His gigantic rounded eyes examined the room behind her before he focused on her. “My lady, we heard a cry and sought to learn if you are distressed. Or ill?”
And what game do you play, Cleve, when you know who is here? “Neither, Cleve. I stubbed my toes and yelped.”
Simon’s little man folded his arms in satisfaction and shot a daring look up at Cleve.
“You may return to the hall, Cleve,” Elise grumbled, “and take your pleasure as you wish.” Heaven knows, I did.
“Your cheeks are red. Is your fire too high?”
She would have laughed but choked it back, knowing the price of that insulting mirth might be her undoing at this man’s hands. “Very high. I like it well.”
The small man nodded in agreement.
Elise scowled at both of them. “Good night, Cleve, and to you, too, little man.”
She closed the door in their faces.
She turned towards her husband who had taught Cleve such boldness. Alphonse slept, like a child, deep in his dreams, but she noticed his face seemed more pale than before, his snoring more shallow. She stepped to him and felt his forehead. Cool. Ah, so then, healthy as he could be. And so it was time again to deal with this other man in her chambers.
She strode through the room towards her alcove and her rumpled bed. Simon lay there, head propped up against her many pillows, the splendour of his brawny, bronzed nakedness making her mouth water and drop open in frank admiration.
His lips, so full, so sure, so wicked on her most secret parts, now curved in a devilish taunt. “You have never seen such a big man.” It was no question. “I am gratified.”
He swept a hand down his furry chest, broad from battles, browned in foreign sunlight. His arms, great cords of sinew, rippled as he gestured downward. His loins were lean, his legs, hard lines of sculpture. And between them lay the part of him that lengthened at her perusal. The part of him she now had a right to, if only for tonight. A great, smooth, blue-veined rod that felt like molten iron in her cunt.
“My memory,” she told him on a small breath of awe, “is very bad, I see. Your body has much changed since last we met and swam in the pond by the river.”
“As has yours, my sweet.”
At his compliment, she tore her eyes from his shaft to lock on his silver gaze. His words bore tender tones that could seduce her more, were she not careful and dedicated to her quest to remain independent of his charm. Yet she stepped closer, her fingers—unbidden—reaching to touch his forearm, where a long, pale slash bisected his darker skin. “This wound?”
He drew in air at her fingers on him. “A Saracen’s scimitar.”
“And this?” She traced a hollow in his lower chest above his ribs.
“A part of me festered there from the wound of an arrow. The Templar cut the flesh from me lest I absorb the poison on the tip which could turn my blood to dung.”
She could not stop the pity from showing in her eyes. “Yet, for all your trials, you have grown so large, so healthy that—”
“That you love how I take you.”
She gulped back shame, modesty and pride all at once. And she would have turned away, but he caught her wrist.
“Admit it.”
She had her back to him, her arm still captive, as was she. “I would love it better if you took me with more affection. As we once were.”
He tugged at her. “Look at me, then. There.” His own eyes held sweet compassion now. “Shall I woo you with pretty words and recount, like a travelling minstrel, the glories of your golden hair and sky-blue eyes?”
He did not sound dedicated or convinced of the rightness of that, yet she answered him with a nod and an admission. “Aye, I deserve it.” Because I have not had it since you left me—and I expect it from no man, save you. “I know your years of service in Ottoman lands must have allowed you to bed who you wished any way you wished. And you must have had great pleasure.”
He snorted and dragged her to sit on the bed beside him. “How would you know what brings me pleasure?”
“I did once,” she gave him back in angry kind. “Your devotion to make me smile was your highest goal.”
“Bah! Tell me that you did not like what we did here.” He dragged her closer still and sent a hand through her tresses to cup her head and bring her mouth a breath from his. “I felt your creamy cunt on my lips and on my tongue. Have a taste.”
He kissed her with lips and tongue, and she fell into his arms, enchanted.
“You wanted me. Still do.” He spoke on her mouth. “Admit that.”
She stared up at him as her body betrayed her by giving down the wealth of her cream and his seed to coat her thighs. She clenched her legs and pulled to leave him.
Foiled, he shot a hand out to bunch up the night rail and press his hand to her curly mound. His fingers threaded into her wealth and tugged, eliciting the succulent sounds of their comingled juices. “Ah, there is proof of how well we loved!”
Her head lolled on her shoulders. “Aye,” she cried out, “I wanted you! Wanted what you could give me.” Wanted what I was denied for sake of family, lands and country. “Want you now again.”
“To bear a son.”
To hold you close inside me! “A boy, a girl, two, I care not!�
� She wrenched herself away from him to stand and wobble near the bed, spitting out her ire at her piteous lot, as their sweet love juice began to trickle down her thighs. “I come from female stock that bears fine boys who grow to strapping men. That’s why Alphonse married me—and you well know it. After he had two young and sterile wives, he buried both, not a hint of a baby from either. But I have done my duty here by him. I have lain with him at his command, regularly and often, and I say this barrenness is not my fault. Alphonse knows this to be true. Try as I might to tempt him or stroke him, I cannot help that his poor rod is short and limp. A puny thing no bigger than a thimble! A rod I could raise with my nakedness, but he could never keep hard inside me for longer than a few minutes. Whereas, you—” She almost cried out at the heat and the jumping pulse of his penis in her hand as she leaned over and cupped him. “You,” she whispered, “are the loving husband God should have given me, and now, instead, I am given the opportunity to lie abed with you and bring forth a son that my feeble, dying husband cannot ever give me.”
“Elise,” Simon’s earth-deep voice permeated her despair as he gathered her to him on the bed. “Come, my lovely girl,” he crooned and enfolded her in the massive cocoon of his care. “Do not cry.”
She was crying? What outrage. She swiped her tears from her cheeks and pushed at him to leave.
He held her fast. “Elise, I did not know about Alphonse. His failure to pleasure you.” Simon’s huge hand fell to cup one breast and lift it up to meet the homage of his mouth. She writhed as he sucked her to a ripe point. “Ah, my heart, I rejoice at how you respond to me. How you need my mouth and my fingers and my shaft. In truth, I have spent my years in exile from your sweetness imagining how often and in what ways your husband would have you in his bed.” He kissed her other nipple and titillated her with his hot, wet tongue. “With ripe jealousy, I have eaten my heart out and my guts. If I can now give you pleasure and my seed, I welcome the chance.”
“Really?” She shrank from him and clawed her way beyond him on the mattress to stand and glare at him. “How kind of you.”
“Elise, there is no need to insult me.”
“Me? Insult you? My lord, be not so bold.” She swept out a hand, seething fire at his affront to her. “What of how you gain from this?”
His brows flew high in alarm.
Would Simon believe her so naïve that she would fail to suspect some exchange for the favour he bestowed on the house of Atherton?
She whirled away and clenched her hands. For all her prodding of her husband on this matter, Alphonse would not reveal the benefits he would give to Simon. She’d screamed at her husband, scolded him, but he refused to tell her any details. Yet, what else could lure a fabled knight to a rich woman’s dangerous bed, but one asset? “How much?”
“One hundred silver talents to bed you.” Simon was quiet, lax in body. Was he therefore, wary at her new knowledge?
He should be.
Her eyes ran up to the roof beams. “How instructive to learn my true worth. I wonder what a harlot costs.”
“Elise…” He rose up in an attempt to embrace her.
But she was faster and escaped him to stand out of his grasp. “One hundred for the bedding?”
He inhaled, resigned to her pursuit of the topic. “Aye.”
Hands on her hips, she tapped her foot. To lie abed with him would not be the proof of the goods, however. So she asked, “And what for a baby in my belly? More?”
“Aye.” He met her wrath with soft, silver-eyed empathy. “Two hundred more.”
She blinked and licked her lips. “And for a birth?”
“Double the total.”
Her knees buckled. She could not look at him, but she rallied and asked, “A girl?”
“Five hundred, should she live past five years.”
“I see. And the son, the heir, the prize?”
“Double again if he lives to fourteen.”
If she could flee the room, the castle, her life, her doom, she would have torn herself free though her hands go raw. “And who pays you? Alphonse will be dead and buried. Who will he give the silver to that we may all agree is honest enough to part with it when the time comes? King John will not. He’ll steal the funds and call it his right. So who is the banker?”
“John’s daughter.”
“Joanna?” In a way, the knowledge that her dear young friend with whom she’d once lodged for a summer would offer to pay this wicked purse did not surprise Elise. “The one person in the world who loves John best.”
“And you as well,” Simon added. “She will not have you suffer.”
“Joanna has a noble husband in her Prince of Wales who lies in her bed and gives her a child every year.” And thus she understands my peril to produce no heirs.
Elise cursed and strode to her trestle table and picked up her jug of wine. This mating was well planned. But the deal still stung. “A drink, my lord de la Poer? I fear I need a large draught.” She poured, sloshing the red liquid over the rims of two cups. She perceived his warmth behind her, and she spun against his chest, one cup in her hand. “Your drink. Take it. We shall both hail the child we shall make and the money you shall.”
He replaced his cup on her table. His arms enclosed her. “Not I.”
“Of course, you will. This way you will earn what you have needed from your birth. A fortune, eh?” she taunted him.
He captured her face between his hands. “What I have needed from the day I walked into your father’s counting room and saw the smiling six-year-old who laughed and smiled at me is you.”
“Yet you made this filthy bargain? To have me for lucre?”
“Aye!”
“A fairytale. A filthy tale. You want only me, but you will bed me for silver.”
“I. Have. No. Choice!”
The two of them paused, toe to toe.
In a whisper, she ventured for another truth which she feared might strike her heart more violently than the last she’d heard. “Why is that?”
He hesitated, but his brooding eyes gave him away. “I owe King John my compliance in this matter. He is devoted to keeping Alphonse and his heirs in power in these upper marches. The Scots do harry John and his allies all along the border, and Alphonse is wealthy enough with sufficient retainers to fight the savages back into their lands. John knows of your intelligence and the fealty Alphonse’s men show you.”
“Nay!” she scoffed. “No fealty will be left if they learn I have been tupped by the legendary Knight Divine and thus soiled my husband’s honour as well as mine!”
“No one will know.”
“Do not be blind. My maid knows. Cleve knows.” She pointed towards the door. “Your…your little man knows!”
“Katani has no tongue and cannot tell anyone anything. Your maid, however, I leave you to secure. Both she and Cleve can be bought.”
“Cleve? Bought? You think he may not be welded to my husband’s cause?”
“Best not to trust someone like Cleve beyond where you may see him. But in this case, Alphonse’s cause can benefit Cleve even after the old man is dead.”
“How?” she taunted him. “I see no one with the power.”
“You do not credit me with much beyond raw brutality,” Simon mourned.
“You mean to say you can pay Cleve? Ha! How is that? You have some of your new-found gain on your person now, do you?”
“Alphonse has given Cleve orders that I am to run the estate. My word is law.”
Her heart pounded at the betrayal of her husband to her power. She stepped back. “Is that so? I am superceded in my own house? By a lover? By my husband’s cuckold while he lies on his death bed?”
“Nay. You are superior here. But I am second.”
“Fine and well then.” This was small recompense, but she would use it. “Leave me.”
“Elise, I warn you—”
“Aye, warn me well, my Knight Divine. I see what is at stake here. At first, I thought it was only my vi
rtue. Only my body given to you for him. But now I see, it is my country, my king, my kinsmen who can die if I do not lie abed with you and make a child. Interesting that the reasons given to me to betroth me to my husband are the same as those that now demand I spread my legs for you.” A sob rose in her throat, and she caught back its sorrow with a hand to her lips. “Leave me. We will resume our sport when I am ready. When I am willing. When I can do this with full mind to the cause.”
She watched him back away towards her husband’s room. There Simon picked up his tunics, his braies and his slippers. He yanked them on and strode towards the back stairs which led down to the smaller room beneath hers where he was lodged. He turned, fury lining his brow.
“I take my leave of you for my own quarters below where you may join me at your leisure. But heed me, do not let your anger simmer long, my lovely. The world is waiting for your baby. And we must be about making him, before your husband dies, and no one who lives in these climes can still claim their country is England.”
Chapter Four
Snowflakes obliterated her view, but Elise trudged onward, a hand to her forehead. Ulred’s hut had never seemed so far from the castle walls as it did on this day when she needed to see her old friend—and do it quickly.
The snow of this storm was not yet deep, but it laid a slick layer on the ice that caused Elise to slip and almost fall more than once. The wind cut through her cloak, and she tried to brace against it to no avail. She stopped, one arm out to steady herself and pant against a tree.
Something crackled in the forest. A tree limb falling under the weight of ice? She jerked her head around and surveyed the terrain but saw nothing. She shivered in fear. A family of wild boars had moved into these woods last autumn and attacked anything that moved. Before Christmastide, the male had chased Ulred and cornered her, slicing one of her ankles with his long sharp tusks. But Elise saw nothing that resembled the huge, hairy beasts. Still, a flapping of wings made her jump, and she looked up at a fat crow, high above her in a tall pine.
“Best you stay there in this storm,” she murmured to him. Clutching her hood deeply about her face, she bent to the wind once more and headed for the thatched home of Atherton’s only outcast.
At Her Service (Swords of Passion) Page 4
