She hazarded a glance at him, but his expression was unreadable. “Had I known how impossible that vow would prove…” she murmured, her eyes blurry with moisture. “Ah God, I can’t imagine what hell it will be to live without you, knowing the heaven I’ve found in your arms.”
Duncan squeezed his eyes shut, battling control of his senses. Part of him wanted to soar at her words. Part of him wanted to curse her. “I offered you that heaven, for all eternity. You cast it aside.”
“Because I had to. Because I must,” she sobbed. “Because of my promise.”
Duncan swore and seized her by the shoulders. “What kind of promise makes you cast aside the greatest love you’ll ever know? Or makes you betray the man who threw his heart at your feet? What kind of promise makes you sentence yourself to a life without this?”
He dragged her to him, arching her backward over one arm and burying the other hand deep in her tresses, loosing half the pins. He pressed his mouth to hers, savagely, as if to brand her his own. Her lips were as warm as flame, and she tasted of honey mead. He crushed her to him, oblivious to the pain, kissing her with the desperation of a condemned man.
Linet’s fingers closed like talons in the fabric at the front of his cassock, drawing him nearer. She returned his kiss, so fiercely she bruised his swollen lip. She drew breath in long, shaking gasps against his cheek and moaned deep in her throat. Duncan’s control evaporated.
“The devil curse me for a fool,” he muttered hoarsely against her hair, “but I still want you, Linet.”
“Then the devil curse us both,” she breathed.
Linet felt as if she were diving into a raging ocean of sensation. Every nerve in her body drew taut. Everywhere his flesh brushed hers, she burned with desire. Her lips were swollen, her breasts ached with wanting, and though he pressed hard against her, still she needed to be closer. Every inch of her longed to join with him.
Once more, she thought, just once more. Before she had to meet her destiny—the bleak, barren destiny that seemed to stretch into eternity before her—she wanted to glimpse heaven one final time. Then she would accept the consequences. Then she would go willingly to that existence to which she’d been condemned by the cruel trick of fate. But she yearned to feel his love just once more.
“Please,” she begged, clutching at his cassock.
He needed no second plea. Wincing only once when she collided with him, he swept her off her feet and carried her to the bed, laying her out atop the rose-scented coverlet.
With a groan, he swooped down upon her. He buried his face against her neck, his breath almost a sob on her skin. She whimpered impatiently as the warm flesh of his loins brushed hers, seeking, finding. Penetrating.
The burning didn’t come this time. A breathtaking fullness anchored her as her body closed in welcome around his. She squeezed her eyes tightly in ecstasy as he simply held her. Then she wrapped her arms about his neck and rested her head against his shoulder. He belonged here, she thought, savoring the pressure of his loins against her.
For a long moment he lay motionless, letting waves of arousal wash within her in their own sweet cadence. Then, slowly, he began to move. Each inward thrust was like the perfect crossing of yarn across a loom, steady and smooth. Linet, like a novice, moved beneath him impatiently. But though he trembled with the effort, the beggar was the master weaver, forcing her to the slower, surer pace. Surrendering to his lead, she reveled in the rhythm of their lovemaking.
Together they wove the fabric of their need, kissing and stroking and drawing each other toward a shared goal. For now, no life existed beyond the clasp of their souls—no reivers, no title, no promise. Nothing could separate or distract them from that perfect merging. The fire crackled in response to their ragged pleas and throaty whispers, bathing them in warm golden light.
Quickly, Linet learned the tempo of pleasure and sought to prolong the sweet agony, retreating slowly and drawing out the sensations. But the beggar wouldn’t endure such play for long. With a low growl, he pushed into her with his full weight, and his bones ground against hers with a primitive pulse. She wrapped her thighs around his waist, squeezing the tender ribs they had both forgotten.
His movements grew more and more deliberate. Soon she matched his every thrust, burying her head against his strong neck and clinging to him like to a runaway steed.
She could have ridden that way forever, but her body began to build to a fever pitch of sensitivity. She felt some inner core expand into a glowing ball of light, rising slowly toward the heavens until it reached a zenith. Her back arched impossibly, and she cleaved fiercely to the beggar for an endless, breathless moment of absolute still.
Then she was shaken by the tremors of a million shards of crystal exploding into the sky, showering upward and outward and finally, finally falling softly back to earth.
While her body was still racked with uncontrollable shudders, the beggar made his own powerful ascent. Seized by the throes of passion, oblivious to the torture of his bruised muscles, he surged forward with the force of a wild beast and spilled his bounty deep inside her.
For a long while, the only sounds in the room were the snapping fire and their own labored breathing.
Duncan gazed solemnly down at the woman he’d just bedded against all his better judgment. She’d left him as weak as a new foal. He shivered with the force of his release, and his nostrils quivered with each breath. Tomorrow, every muscle and bone in his body would be complaining about the abuse it had endured for his pleasure. But it would be worth it.
No one compared to Linet. She was everything—passionate, strong, and yielding. She demanded and she surrendered, gave and received with equal ardor.
He’d meant to punish her for betraying him, but now that seemed like a distant and foolish obsession. Later, they would sort out their misunderstandings. She would apologize. He would forgive her. Eventually he’d wean her from her snobbery. But for now, he only wanted to hold her.
“I may live to regret these words, Linet, but I have to say them.” He ran his thumb across the curve of her chin. “I love you.”
Linet dissolved instantly into tears. She didn’t mean to. She intended to bask in the afterglow of their lovemaking, and then bid the beggar a fond, if bittersweet, farewell, to leave him before he could betray her. She’d gracefully resign herself to whatever the dismal future held for her. But she didn’t expect their union to be so soul-changing. And she didn’t expect the thought of leaving him to hurt so much. Faith, how was she ever going to live without his love?
“Did I hurt you?” he whispered, furrowing his brow.
“Nay,” she sobbed. And yet she ached with an anguish far beyond physical pain.
“Shh,” he soothed, smoothing the hair back from her brow. “There’s no need for tears, my love.”
Her weeping worsened. She didn’t want him to call her that. She didn’t want to hear that he loved her. Their coupling, however sweet, did nothing to alter the vow made to her father. He would hurt her. He would betray her. She couldn’t let him do that. She had to leave him before he left her. She had to banish him from her life…forever. All she’d take from him was memories and his…
A sob caught in her throat. Mother of God, she realized, she didn’t even know…
She wiped her nose on her sleeve. “Will you tell me one thing…before you go?”
He screwed up his forehead. “Before I go?”
“Tell me your name, your real name?”
He was silent a long while. Then a smile seemed to tug at the corners of his mouth. “You don’t know my—”
He got no further. The door to the chamber opened with a whoosh of air that made the fire dance crazily, then banged back against the wall.
Linet’s heart stopped.
“It sounded like she was in trouble,” Linet’s maidservant was chattering as she swept into the room.
“What the devil!” In strode Lord Guillaume, his chin still greasy from supper, his face fast
purpling with rage.
Linet felt the air crystallize inside her like the first chill breath of winter.
The beggar moved away from her with quick dignity, pulling her surcoat down over her numb legs before he wrapped the cassock around himself. He stood tall and solemn, with the confidence of a highborn knight able to defend his honor and that of his ladylove.
“What is the meaning of this?” Lord Guillaume demanded.
Linet trembled, certain her guilt was branded onto her forehead.
“Guards!” the lord shouted.
“I can explain,” the beggar assured him.
“Does this man mean anything to you?” Lord Guillaume asked her pointedly, ignoring the beggar.
Linet was too stunned to speak.
“Show him the ring I gave you, Linet,” the beggar murmured. “It will explain—”
“Silence!” the lord barked.
Linet clutched her finger where the ring used to be. She glanced guiltily at the beggar. A muscle in his jaw tensed.
“Guards!” Lord Guillaume shouted again.
“Tell him who I am,” the beggar insisted.
Linet’s mind was a blur of confusion. Her uncle must not find out. After all her father had endured to earn his title back—all the years of hard labor, all the sacrifices—it wasn’t in her to shatter his dreams like cheap glass. Her uncle must not discover she’d fallen into the same gutter wherein she was spawned.
Duncan tried to remain calm. He didn’t move a muscle when two burly guards appeared at the doorway. He knew, despite the missing ring, Linet would somehow explain his presence.
“Linet?” Lord Guillaume prodded.
Her voice was numb, wooden, quiet. “I don’t know his name, my lord.”
Duncan’s heart turned to stone. He stared at her in disbelief. She wouldn’t meet his eyes.
And then he felt nothing, even when the guards grabbed his arms and shoved him roughly through the door. He remembered nothing of the trek to the cold, dank cell below the castle. And when they clasped the iron rings around his wrists, he thought only that they were no colder nor harder than Linet’s heart—her black, lying heart.
CHAPTER 16
Linet only vaguely recalled what happened the rest of the night, in blurs and fragments. Numbness descended upon her, enveloping her like a bubble, shielding her from the buffeting of the outside world.
A flurry rose up around her. A pair of whispering maidservants stripped the linens from the bed and replaced them. A woman made her drink a huge cup of opium wine. Lord Guillaume paced the length of the chamber in agitation, repeating over and over that no word was to leave this room. And someone kept sobbing and sobbing like to wake the dead. But within her sphere of protection, she seemed to float freely above it all.
If an occasional shaft of pain lanced suddenly through her all the way to her heart, it was soothed soon enough by the wine’s balm of oblivion. And by the assurance that she could count on Lord Guillaume to take care of everything.
She hadn’t counted on his wrath.
Deep in the bowels of de Montfort castle, Duncan sat on a filthy mound of hay. Moisture oozed from the dank, mossy stone walls, and the stench of rotting rushes and rat excrement was nauseating. Not a sliver of light could find its way into the cell. Duncan could only imagine what creatures scratched and skittered in the corners of the cramped hole he’d been thrown in.
He slumped forward, not bothering to pull the edges of the cassock together, in spite of the fact he was shivering violently, his lips blue with cold. He was too devastated to care.
He refused to think about Linet. He knew that if he let himself dwell on her betrayal, he’d be torn apart with rage. Instead, he thought about his family—his gracious mother, his good-hearted father. He thought about his brothers—Holden, so brave, and Garth, so brilliant—and the dozens of black-haired, blue-eyed children who huddled around him after supper every night to hear their favorite stories.
Who would tell them what had befallen their father? Who would know? Not even the wool merchant could say who he truly was. Without his crest ring, he was utterly anonymous. He blew out a slow, icy breath.
He was going to die. He knew that. No nobleman would settle for less than death for a peasant who had dared to defile his kinswoman. It was only a matter of when and how.
She wouldn’t be there, of course, when they executed him. She couldn’t abide the sight of blood. It was just as well. He never wanted to see her deceiving face again. He only prayed that when the time came to die, he’d do so bravely, like the de Ware that he was.
With a prayer for courage on his lips, he curled into a ball on the damp stones and fell mercifully asleep.
The sun rose, and stillness hung in the air. A hawk made lazy circles across the pink sky, hunting for its breakfast. Within the gray castle walls, most of the inhabitants were already well into the day’s activities.
But Linet still slept. Only a young maidservant, bustling about the room, at last woke her from her drugged stupor. The girl was jabbering away about a scullery lad burned in a kitchen accident, some public flogging, and her latest sweetheart. Linet sat up dizzily, annoyed that she’d overslept, mostly ignoring the servant’s babble.
She shook the cobwebs from her brain. The sleeping draught had left her dazed. As she perched on the edge of the bed, some ugly memory kept trying to bob up to the surface of her thoughts, but always it was pulled under again before she could grasp it. She rubbed her throbbing temples. Never again, she swore, would she let anyone give her opium wine.
Finally, she stumbled from the bed and began digging through her wooden chests, searching blindly for something to wear. The servant giggled and shook her head, gesturing to the garments already laid out for her.
Linet yawned, rubbing the crust from her eyes with the back of her hand. As shaky as a newborn colt, she wobbled to her feet.
Then, from outside the window, she heard a hollow thumping. It was the sound of a distant, solemn tambour.
“What’s that?” she remarked, mostly to herself.
“Why, that’s the prisoner I told you about, my lady,” the servant told her. “No doubt they’re taking him up now.”
Linet frowned. She supposed she should have paid more attention to the maid’s prattle. “Prisoner?”
“Aye, my lady,” the servant said, holding up a linen shift for Linet, “the one they’re to flog.” She clucked her tongue. “A pity we won’t get to watch. But Lord Guillaume bade me keep you here until it’s finished.”
Linet made a grimace of disgust as the maid slipped the shift over her head. She’d just as soon stay in her chamber. She’d always detested public humiliations and punishments. They were just an unwelcome reminder that in some ways, no matter what her father preached, nobles were not so far removed from savages.
“It’s scandalous, really,” the servant confided, crossing herself. “They say he’s a monk.”
Linet’s heart stumbled. “What?” She could scarcely draw breath. “What did you say?”
“The man’s a monk. They won’t say what he did, but Lord Guillaume…”
Linet ceased listening. Memory jolted her like a clap of thunder. In the distance, the tambour echoed hauntingly.
It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be, she reasoned, she hoped. But somehow she knew for whom the tambour sounded.
“A monk?” she whispered.
“Aye,” the young maid replied, wary of the look in her mistress’s eye.
The tambour’s cadence felt like her own death knell as Linet walked to the window. Her nerves vibrated with tension. A thin stream of air swept spirit-like through the arrow loop. She squinted against the harsh light of the sun. What she saw made her knees turn soft as custard. She clutched the stone sill for support.
A somber procession made its way out of the barbican gate. A dozen nobles rode on horseback, Lord Guillaume at their fore. Throngs of peasants crowded about—curious children, gawking old women, scowling crofters. S
he could hear the hungry jeers of rabid spectators, barking insults and slurs.
In the midst of the procession, a blackened cart rolled with reluctant sloth along the road toward Gallow’s Hill. Its passenger was half-naked, his muddy brown robe hanging from his hips by its rope tie. His legs were braced apart so he wouldn’t fall from the swaggering cart. His chest and arms bulged against the heavy chains wrapped round his body. Though his head hung limply upon his breast, the cords of his neck strained in obvious discomfort. His face was concealed, but there was no mistaking that muscular form, those sable curls.
Linet’s throat constricted with dread as her gaze was drawn inexorably toward the man in the cart. She longed to look elsewhere, to forget what she’d glimpsed, but some compelling force pulled at her, willing her to watch. Only when the retinue passed beneath an obscuring canopy of trees did she finally tear her eyes away, staggering back from the window, her face bloodless.
“Oh, my lady!” the servant gasped, rushing forward, misunderstanding. “Do not distress yourself! Your own uncle has seen to that devil’s punishment. They say the man was already beaten half to death. The flogging will assuredly finish him. There is nothing to worry about.”
Finish him? Linet’s brain screamed. Dear God, Lord Guillaume couldn’t mean to kill the beggar, could he? Panic shortened her breath. This couldn’t be happening. She couldn’t let it happen, not when she…
She loved the beggar. Sweet Mary, she understood that now. She loved him. Beyond reason. Beyond hope. Beyond any vow she’d given her father. Even if he meant to break her heart, she loved him.
And by God, if it cost her everything, she had to save his life. It was in her hands, she realized. It was up to her to cease this travesty.
Biting her lip, she seized a gray cloak from a hook on the wall and swung it over her shoulders atop her shift.
Knights of de Ware 01 - My Champion Page 25
