HEARTS AFLAME

by Nancy Morse

  “It can’t be repaired.” He set the tools aside and wiped his hands on the dirty leather. “It must be made new, forged whole again, from pure metal, not broken scraps.” His dark expression dared her to argue.

  “V-very well, but we should have spoken to him first. This is not what he wanted.”

  “Few men get what they want,” he said ferociously. “The Lord of Metz will get this. He will accept it, and if he doesn’t I will buy it from him as a symbol of my stupidity in chasing a solution that doesn’t exist.”

  “Do you speak only of the spata?”

  His jaw hardened.

  “Rowan, I enjoyed our dance. I only spent so much time with Leon because I am afraid.”

  “Afraid? Of me?” he asked scathingly. “Fia the Defiant, who would bed and wed a fiend from hell, is afraid of me?”

  She would not look away. She could not. “You twist my words the way you twisted that metal.”

  His brows rose in a taunt. “Ah, you do not leap to his defense any longer?”

  “You have asked me to not speak of it again, so I won’t.”

  She placed her hand on his forearm. His skin burned hot and scorching, the muscles beneath his slick sweat resistant as iron. His hand shot up, dug beneath her veil to find the hair at the nape of her neck. He tugged downward, forcing her chin up enough for him to glare down at her. There was nothing boyish about his face set in the flat, unyielding planes of anger.

  “Go into the house,” he ordered, barely opening his mouth as he spoke.

  “No.”

  A shadow moved in his eyes, and he dropped his lips to hers in a crushing kiss that she answered instinctively, hands lifting to press to his neck where his heavy pulse throbbed. She stepped in to meld against him, body to body, in the way she’d wanted to do when dancing, as if they could become one person.

  His caress moved down her back to her buttocks, possessive and captivating as he lifted her into tight awareness of his body. She moaned, her hands clinging to his shoulders, trying to lift herself taller so she could be eye to eye, kiss to kiss, hip to hip. The filthy apron was probably ruining her new tunic, but she didn’t care.

  Forgive me, Victor, she thought as she let his memory go.

  Rowan pulled away as if sensing the wraith who had just left her heart. He gripped her wrists tightly and forced them to her sides.

  “The metal is ready and I have work to do.”

  “But….”

  “I will not be led by you again.”

  “I’m not trying to trick you. I swear it! You have always been so good to me and —”

  “Good to you!” he spat out. The fire in his eyes flared and he stared down at her, something primitive and feral still lurking behind the flames. “And look where all my goodness has gotten me.”

  He swooped down to kiss her again. The iron grip on her wrists released so he could grab her waist, one hand sliding to the small of her back, to hold her tightly against him.

  She answered, opened her mouth for him, moaned as she rose on tiptoe. She slid her hands upward, intending to twine her arms around his neck, but he caught them again and spun her deftly, until she suddenly faced the fire and he held her by her hips, her back to his unyielding chest.

  The posture exposed her in some way, even though she was fully clothed, but then his hand pushed her veil away, and the heat of his seeking mouth settled on her neck, burning all questions of how she stood or what she was doing out of her mind.

  “Take off your veil,” he growled. “Show me your hair.”

  When she reached up, his hands settled on her breasts, testing their weight, then claiming with firm, gentle possession. She whimpered, but with the barrier of the veil removed, his hands shifted to take her hair in great fistfuls, not pulling but again, claiming.

  “So beautiful, Fia,” he said, his voice now a low, dangerous rasp.

  She turned her head for a kiss, and he complied, leaning over her shoulder, holding her fast when she would have turned into him. He broke away and whisked the golden tunic over her head before she even knew what was happening, leaving her in her thin underclothes. He bared her shoulder and caressed her there and up her neck, across the flat of her breastbone.

  “Your skin is so warm, not only to my touch, but to my sight, as if you are glowing,” he murmured.

  “You make me glow,” she said. She spoke the truth. She’d never been so excited yet cherished, as if she could fly apart without risk, do anything, show him anything, without fear.

  His hand delved lower, touched her, skin on skin, then impatiently pushed one side of the tunic down to expose her dark nipple to the flickering fire. His hips pressed against her bottom as he drank in the sight of the tip tightening beneath the teasing of his fingers.

  “I am small,” she whispered. “Not like most women.”

  The pleasant rumble of his laugh made her spine tingle. “This man has never seen anything more womanly than you in the firelight with your soft skin like bronze. And this lovely peak that rises to my hand. I want to put my mouth there, but I can’t bear to stop looking at you like this.” He played with her, cupping and stroking, murmuring praise until she began to believe him.

  She inhaled sharply when his other hand rucked up her hem, the callouses on his fingers quickly distracting her as he rubbed the tender skin on the inside of her thigh.

  She moved her feet apart without thought and felt him smile on her neck.

  “I am not good, Fia. Not tonight.” His hand sought and found and the smile widened, teeth brushing at her skin. “You are glowing for me. For me,” he said firmly.

  He caressed her there where she was hot and slick until her arm was wrapped awkwardly around his neck and her knees wavered. He took the touch away. She protested with a whimper, then realized he was leading her to a bench. He guided her to sit straddling it and moved to sit behind her.

  “Please, Rowan, I want to see you,” she begged, wishing he would sit facing her, or God help her, lay her down and rise over her.

  “No. I will see you,” he insisted. “I will have what I want tonight, and you will take what I give. For once.” His voice was still quiet, but the primitive edge was back. This was not only Rowan taking something he wanted but perhaps also teaching her a lesson about toying with him?

  The idea flew away as his hand once again sought the juncture of her legs. She jerked back against him, felt the blade of his arousal hard against her back. He pressed it against her. So not only taking. Perhaps.

  Then, as he stroked her, that thought was gone, too. Her knees lifted, and he pushed the tunic impatiently up to her waist until she was open to the fire, its heat a tender caress layered on top of Rowan’s insistent touch, and soon her feet were braced on his thighs. He praised the whorish posture, drove her upward, rocked his hips in a rhythm that answered hers until they were grinding together in a mockery of intercourse.

  Her arms wrapped awkwardly around his neck again, needing to touch his skin wherever she could. She wanted more, still wanted to see him, yet she couldn’t stop, couldn’t dream of pausing to ask as she rode the unfamiliar spiral up, up, up.

  Then, pop, she flew apart, startled and scattering on a series of cries and arching motions.

  He groaned into her hair, shuddered, said her name and a soft curse as their movements slowed, then ceased.

  His hands slipped reluctantly from her sex so he could wrap his arms around her, and when she closed her shaking legs and turned, he allowed it, cradling her and tucking her feet under one of his legs, bringing all the pieces of her back together, somehow more than before.

  His heart thundered away beneath her ear and she wondered…she had no idea what had just happened to her, but she knew a man did not like to be left unsatisfied. The hand that had been clutching his waist went exploring. He caught it in an uncompromising hold.

  “There is nothing to find down there. I spent like a boy, not even needing to remove my
braies.”

  He didn’t sound entirely happy about it.

  She slid her hand back to his waist, closed her eyes, and snuggled into him. The tang of sweat and metal, the earthiness of their bodies together, the musk of something else, rose between them in an intimate, perfect perfume. But where she felt comfort and peace, an energy quivered in him, back and forth like a dead leaf trapped in its branch, unable to escape the whipping of the wind, not free to float to the ground.

  Rowan held her and tried to convince himself this was what he’d always wanted. To feel her willing and warm in his arms. To know the sound of her reaching ecstasy. It had been almost everything he’d dreamed. Except he’d always thought he’d claim her with honest passion and love. There had been some of that tonight, to be sure, but also his own anger. A hint of him showing her that he could, and that he would.

  The memory of her open to the fire, his hands manipulating her as he wished, both excited and shamed him. Still, he had claimed her, and the next time it would be done properly, with the correct motivations and protections in place.

  He kissed the top of her head, feeling more at ease now that he knew how to make things right between them. “I will speak to your mother tonight. There will be another wedding in Metz with all haste, and things will be settled,” he said without preamble.

  She stiffened. “A wedding?”

  “Yes, of course. What sort of man do you take me for? Do you think I would touch you like this then ride home to Alda as if nothing happened?”

  “Well, no, but…we didn’t plan this, tonight. We should think.”

  “Think about what?” he demanded. He leaned slightly away from her to glare down, anger and some panic mixing in an unpleasant stew in his gut. “Think about what?”

  She lifted the tunic over her shoulder to cover her breast. “You should think about who you are, and who I am. I am nobody and you are…you.”

  “And what will you be thinking about? I swear on my father’s spata that if you mention Victor I will —”

  “No! This is not about Victor. I mean, if I was not a terrible, disloyal person, it would be about Victor, but —” She’d let Victor go and felt unweighted from a burden she’d carried for too long.

  “Saints preserve me. I’ve done it again.” He slid away, rose to walk to the forge. “An hour ago, you gifted your smiles and wiles on that tradesman. Your flirtation was so similar I almost mistook him for Victor a few times. How could I be so stupid?” He whirled to find her staring up at him, mouth open in shock. “Are we all interchangeable to you?”

  “No! I was wrong to spend so much time with Leon, but this was different. Everything with you has always been different to me, and this change between us is so sudden —”

  He cut her off with the slash of his hand. “There is nothing sudden about this to me, and if you have to think, if you feel disloyal to another man, then there is nothing to think about at all.”

  She may have spoken but his ears were buzzing, and the glow of the metal in the crucible called to him with the promise of distraction, of hitting something with enough force to shape it into the exact thing he wanted, for a change.

  He turned to his work, then spoke lowly, but he knew she heard him. “If you ever cared for me at all, back in the past when the three of us were friends, you’ll leave me alone, now and forevermore.”

  She spoke again. Nothing possibly worth hearing.

  He threw another log on the raging fire, all the better to melt the broken pieces, once and for all. He blended the metal, making sure the three parts became indistinguishable, each utterly ruined, and after awhile, knew that she had gone.

  He may have heard crying in the house, but he did not care. He bid Abril, Stella, and Julius a civil good night when they came home, avoiding Abril’s seeking stare, then returned to crafting the spata.

  The sun rose, the work continued, and everyone gave him a wide berth. Fia lurked in the yard like a skittish colt but never screwed up her courage to approach him. Probably for the best.

  Sparks flew through the darkness as he filed the blade to a dull edge. Then the sound he loved, the smooth grating of the whetstone giving the final, wicked sharpness. Born of heat and hammer, kissed with anger, finished with steady resolve, this gleaming son of a bitch would kill somebody someday.

  Chapter Thirteen

  December 861

  Rowan wrapped his fur-lined cloak tightly around him for the short walk to the great stone house of Alda where he’d been born. Over the course of a few months and quite accidentally, he’d moved into the smith’s empty quarters at the forge where he enjoyed privacy and a penchant for working at odd hours. He took breakfast and dinner with the family to appease his mother and avoid starvation. The wind grabbed at the hem of the cloak, cutting through the layers of wool and fur with a promise of a night perhaps frigid enough to send him to his bed in the relative warmth of the house instead of the lonely chill of the forge.

  A tiny sliver of moon hung in the deep purple of twilight, casting his surroundings in flat gray lacking in definition or relief. Nonetheless, he walked confidently, knowing the road as well as he knew the hilt of the spata under his hand. Even here at Alda they were cautious of wild animals and bandits at night. He relaxed as he passed through the opening in the high stone wall, its thick wood gate yawning wide for now.

  The light from a generous number of oil lamps sneaked beneath the great door, so heavy he’d been ten years old before he could open it on his own, and he’d been a big boy for ten. Normally at this hour, the ever-present servant Ingrid would be supervising the laying out of dinner while her husband Samuel, their overseer, and Otto, her grown son, dined in the kitchen and awaited any end-of-day instructions.

  He’d find Mother and Father by the hearth centered in the hall, reviewing the estate’s challenges of the day, usually including his sister Marian in these discussions, which he would also join while Patrice and Grandmother Marian — his sister’s namesake — would sit properly by with some project involving fabric, thread, and a needle.

  Tonight was different. Though the air was warm, smoky, and familiarly welcoming, there were no servants in sight and no sounds of industry from the kitchen, as if all had been deliberately muffled. Mother was pacing, never a good sign, and Father…he hadn’t seen an expression like that on his sire’s face anywhere but a battlefield. His hand returned to the hilt of his weapon, driven by instinct and training even if he saw no threat in the room. A quick glance showed Marian the younger sitting straight-backed in a chair, jaw set in a hard line.

  If Marian had been a boy child she’d probably have been able to thrash him, for she had the stubbornness of their mother and the courage of their father all packaged in a large woman’s body. She stood tall enough to look him in the eye and broad enough in her shoulders to exert her will on the tenants and make most noblemen cower. The man to marry her would either have to be as fuzzy and pliable as the down of a dandelion or as unbending as the stone pillars in the emperor’s chapel in Aix-la-Chapelle.

  Grandmother sat on the far side of the hearth. Through the smoke, he could see she was dabbing at her eyes with a cloth. Tears from her were not particularly worrisome since she cried at even the most minor upsets. Always had.

  Patrice, oddly enough, sat separate, on the steps that rose along the wall, looking down at her family. Her affronted expression suggested someone hadn’t bathed, or even worse, had done something horribly improper, though what any of them could have done in the dead of winter, here by themselves, he couldn’t imagine. She noticed him looking at her and flapped her hand at the milieu in front of her as if to say, “Behold this irretrievable mess you and I are saddled with.”

  Taken all together, the household, though silent, was damn near in an uproar.

  Rowan figured Father or Marian were his best hopes for a concise explanation, so he raised his brows and alternated his focus on each of them. A muscle flexed in Marian’s jaw but
she remained quiet.

  Father flopped into a chair and rubbed at the decades-old dent at his hairline from the Breton broadsword. “We have just been informed,” he said in the low voice that indicated he was barely controlling his anger, “your sister will become a mother in the spring.”

  Grandmother dissolved into high-pitched weeping at Father’s bald statement while Mother gripped the back of a chair as if she might hurl it. If his father had run him through with a lance, he could not have been more dumbfounded. He had no doubt of which sister — Patrice was so tightly laced she might not let a husband bed her even after the wedding — but Marian? Men were not attracted to her tall self and none had found the spine to pursue her, even for Alda’s wealth. When could she…?

  Ah. The royal assembly. Theophilus had taken her in Father’s stead when his ankle had been injured and Rowan off rescuing Fia. Rowan hadn’t given Marian’s journey much thought at the time, assuming it a welcome opportunity for her to become known among the nobility and make valuable connections. The idea that she’d connected with someone who hadn’t had the decency to make himself known to her family made his weapon hand begin to itch. Come to think of it, when he’d asked her about the assembly, she’d gotten an uncharacteristically feminine expression on her face before offering a succinct, informative summary of both King Lothair’s and Emperor Louis’s schemes, as well as those of the other kings, Charles and Louis the German.

  Now, though, she glared at him with a hint of pleading. He wiggled his fingers to suppress the killing urge and spoke as lightly as he could. “I assume we’ll soon be hosting a wedding featuring one very lucky male citizen of the empire?”

  Her eyes narrowed to slits.

  His palm burned now.

  Father slapped the arm of his chair. “That would be the logical plan if we knew who the bastard was.”

  “Don’t call him that,” Marian seethed. “He didn’t do anything wrong.”