“I shall take my chances.” He grinned and winked at her. “A reward may be all the more delicious for not being sweet.”
Before she could pinch him, Edmund ran off to join the young men who were gathering opposite the ladies on the floor.
The queen leaned over to whisper in her ear. “Owen claims to be a poor dancer, but I begged him to join the competition.” She giggled like a girl and added, “It gives me an excuse to watch him. Does he not look fine in his new clothes?”
The short green tunic and orange leggings revealed Owen’s muscular thighs to advantage.
“The tunic is a gift from you?” Linnet asked.
“As my clerk of the wardrobe, his appearance reflects upon me,” Queen Katherine said. “ ’Tis important he dress well.”
That may be true, but Linnet doubted the queen’s clerk would have received such a fine gift if he were a paunchy man of sixty.
Joannna Belknap, one of the queen’s ladies who sat farther down the row, leaned forward to get their attention. “The dancers are ready! Here is the first one.”
The ladies clapped enthusiastically as each young man took his turn, twirling around the circle and leaping over a candle set on a tall holder in the middle. The third man was Edmund Beaufort, who proved to be an accomplished dancer. When he leapt as gracefully as a hart over the candle flame with a foot to spare, the women whooped and stamped their feet in a most unladylike fashion.
After a final set of spins around the circle, Edmund took a running leap over the candle with his arms and legs extended. As he landed, he dropped to his knees and slid across the floor to stop just in front of Linnet. Linnet threw her head back laughing—until she felt a prickle at the back of her neck.
She turned to see Jamie leaning against the wall with some of the other men who were not participating. His eyes were hot on her, and he was not cheering. Perhaps all was not lost. Jamie looked as if he was torn between murdering her and ripping her clothes off. Linnet met his gaze and held it, not caring who noticed.
The queen elbowed Linnet in the ribs, drawing her attention back to the dancers. “It’s Owen’s turn!”
Edmund Beaufort remained where he was, half lying on the floor in front of Linnet, as the musicians began a new song and Owen took the stage.
Owen had a heavy, muscular frame better suited to a jousting contest than a dancing competition. Owen, however, was the sort of man who could risk making a fool of himself and laugh about it. This lightheartedness was part of what attracted the queen to him. Though Owen could not begin to match Edmund’s performance, he danced with such lively good humor that the ladies soon burst into applause.
“Please do not appear so enthralled, Your Grace,” Linnet whispered, though of course it did no good.
The music grew faster, signaling that the song and Owen’s turn were coming to an end.
The ladies’ cheering encouraged Owen to make a final round of the circle. As he skirted the side where the ladies sat, Linnet saw that the hem of someone’s gown was draped across the floor directly in Owen’s path. Before she could shout out a warning, Owen’s foot caught on the fabric.
“Oh!” Too late, Linnet screamed as Owen flew through the air, sending the ladies scattering and leaping to their feet.
Linnet stared, not quite believing it. Owen had landed facedown… in the queen’s lap.
The music died on an off-key chord. The room went still as everyone stared openmouthed at the queen with Owen’s face buried in her lap. The silence grew deafening as the guests waited for the queen to shout her outrage.
Instead, the queen slapped her hand over her mouth. Her eyes danced, and her shoulders shook.
“Owen, get up!” Linnet hissed, giving him a none-too-discreet kick.
Owen lifted his head—which, most unfortunately, was still between the queen’s thighs—and Her Highness fought against another burst of giggles.
Owen tried to get up, but his feet were hopelessly tangled in the queen’s voluminous skirts. As if by magic, Jamie appeared and hauled Owen to his feet. The two men scraped low bows to the queen—and then were gone.
Chapter Twenty-one
“Are there no more dancers?” Linnet called out above the buzz of whispers in the hall.
When she gave Edmund a pleading look, he clapped his hands and shouted, “Music! Come, Sir Gerald, let us see if you can best me.”
Linnet sighed with relief as a young man took to the floor and the music of flute, harp, and drum filled the hall.
“God bless you, Edmund,” she said close to his ear. “Will you stay with Queen Katherine? I have something I must attend to.”
“Anything for you, my sweet,” Edmund said and kissed her hand yet again.
She really would have to have a talk with him, but not now.
As she made her way through the crowd, she caught bits of conversation and raucous laughter.
“Who was that in the queen’s lap?”
“Don’t know, but I’d say it was not the first time he’s been there!”
God help her, this was a disaster. With everyone looking for signs of an improper liaison between the queen and Owen, the truth could readily be discovered.
By the time Linnet reached the foyer, Jamie and Owen were nowhere in sight. After a quick look in the nearby rooms, she ran across the upper yard without a cloak. The chamber where she and Jamie usually met had most likely been given to one of the new guests, but she would check it anyway.
An instant after she rapped on the door, Jamie filled the doorway, towering above her.
“Where is Owen?” she asked as she scurried past him. Odd, but the room was warm, as if the brazier had been lit for some time.
“Don’t trouble yourself about Owen,” Jamie said. “He is safely out of the way for tonight.”
Linnet threw her hands up in exasperation. “How can the queen be so foolish over him?”
“It must be that she loves him,” Jamie said with an edge to his voice.
“What kind of answer is that?” Linnet said, turning around to face him. “She risks both their lives with this affair.”
“For a woman in love, no sacrifice is too great,” he said. “Or so I have been told.”
His tone was hard and angry, and she did not understand why.
“I did not wait here half the afternoon to talk about Owen and the queen,” he said.
Jamie had been waiting for her? Had he meant to break the news of his betrothal to her alone?
“And now, I want to know what in the name of all the saints you have been doing with Edmund Beaufort,” he said, his voice steadily rising. “Tell me, did you send for him to take my place the moment I was gone?”
His eyes were blazing. When he took a step closer, she had to fight the urge to step back.
“Could you not go a week without a man in your bed?”
This must be what he looked like when he charged at an enemy across a field. But now, she was just as angry. It welled in her chest and pounded in her ears.
“By what right,” she said in a low voice that could have cut steel, “do you believe you can question what I do?”
“Was that silver-tongued Edmund Beaufort man enough for you, or did you bestow your gifts upon others as well?” He took a step closer, and this time she did step back. “You did say one man might not be able to satisfy your needs.”
She could not believe she was hearing this.
“How dare you!” She slapped her hand to her chest, saying, “I am the one who is wronged here.”
“You, the one wronged?” he thundered. “You, the innocent?”
“You have a lot of gall, Jamie Rayburn, to ask me insulting questions about other men, when you have gone behind my back and gotten yourself betrothed.”
From the way Jamie’s mouth fell open, he had not expected her to know about his betrothal yet. What kind of fool did he think she was?
“Did you think I would not hear of it?” she asked, her voice going perilously high and t
hin. “You could not be bothered to tell me first? You must bring her here to Windsor to surprise me with the news?”
The anger seemed to have gone out of him. Guilt could do that. He reached his hand out to her, but she lifted her arms and stepped back from him.
“How could you, Jamie?” she said, tears stinging her eyes despite herself. She hated crying. Hated, hated, hated it. She clenched her fists and turned her back to him.
“I knew all along you would leave me,” she said, trying and failing to control the shake in her voice. “But I thought you would be kinder in how you did it this time. We had an agreement, remember? When you wished to end it, you were to tell me first.”
He came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. As soon as he touched her, her body began to convulse in silent sobs.
“Just go!” she said in a choked whisper. She could not bear to have him see her like this, weak and sniveling.
“I am not betrothed,” he said, his breath against her hair. “I would have told you.”
“Edmund says it is all arranged.”
“It is true that the bishop and Bedford suggested the connection,” he said. “But that is all.”
She wiped her nose on her sleeve, even though it was very bad for the velvet.
“What will you do?” she asked, managing to keep her voice steady this time.
“I am the sort of man who needs a home, a family. A wife.”
It shouldn’t hurt this much to hear him say it. But in her heart, she knew this was true about him. She had known it since the day he left her in Paris. Tears were flowing so hard now that she did not bother swiping at them with her sleeve.
“I want more than a lover,” he said. “I want a woman who will make a life with me and be the mother of my children.”
He was leaving her.
She had to hold her breath to keep from breaking into loud sobs like a five–year-old. Misery twisted at her gut; at the same time, she felt faint and nauseous.
“I love you, Linnet, but ’tis all or nothing with me,” he said. “You will make your pledge to me, or I will find another.”
Jamie loved her.
As she turned to face him, his arms came around her. She rested her head against his chest. It had been such a long, long time since he had told her he loved her.
“Don’t leave me,” she whispered. “Don’t ever leave me.”
“There are promises I need from you,” he said.
“Just don’t go,” she said, closing her eyes and holding him tighter. “Don’t leave me again.”
She did not care what promises she had to make. All she wanted was to be here in his arms.
“I must have your word—”
“We can speak of this later, can we not?” She dropped her hands to his buttocks. “I missed you something fierce.”
His stern expression softened. “You did?”
“Every moment,” she said, her voice growing husky. He pulled her closer and brushed his cheek against hers. Against her ear, he said, “I missed you, too.”
She leaned back so he would see the desire in her eyes when she told him what she wanted from him. “I want you to tell me you love me again, when you are inside me.”
Her words had precisely the effect she hoped.
Jamie crushed her against him and kissed her with a fierceness that set fire prickling beneath her skin. Without lifting his mouth from hers, he backed her up until she leaned against the bed. He cradled her head in his hands, his fingers splayed in her hair, and gave her an openmouthed kiss of such hunger she wasn’t sure there would be anything left of her—and she didn’t care.
When he finally lifted his mouth from hers she gasped for breath—and sucked it in again when he cupped her breasts. His groan of need echoed her own as he buried his face in her neck. She gripped his hair in her hands as he pressed hot wet kisses down her throat.
He spun her around and began unfastening her gown. As his fingers worked the buttons, his ragged breath was in her ear and his shaft hard against her buttocks. Then his mouth was on her bare shoulder. Gentler now, he eased her gown and chemise down together, kissing her bare skin in its wake. She swallowed against the surge of desire when he gripped her hips and nipped her bottom.
A shiver of pleasure shot through her limbs as he ran his tongue up her back. When she turned in his arms, Jamie enfolded her in an embrace that warmed and comforted her, even while it made her heart pound with anticipation. He lifted her onto the bed and then broke away just long enough to strip off his clothes.
She opened her arms to him as he joined her on the bed. When his mouth found hers this time, it was a slow, lingering, openmouthed kiss. They melded into each other, tongues moving in a sensuous rhythm that was a prelude of what was to come.
Praise God, Jamie was back with her. This was all she needed. He was all she needed.
His hand moved up her thigh, and she could not breathe. She ached for him. Ached to have him touch her, to be inside her.
When he touched her center, she was wet with desire for him. She felt the warmth of his breath in her ear as he worked his magic with his fingers.
“Jamie…” She tried to speak, but could not. When she tugged at his shoulder, he understood and rolled on top of her.
At last she felt the tip of his shaft against her. She lifted her hips and gasped with the rush of sensation as he plunged into her. He paused when he was deep inside, and they clung together, both breathing hard. Then he rose on his elbows to look into her eyes. The warmth in them enveloped her and made her heart swell with joy.
“I love you,” he said. “I’ve never stopped.”
Her body clenched around his shaft inside her.
“I love you, too,” she said.
He began moving inside her, with excruciating slowness at first, and then with an urgency that matched her own. They were as one in their passion, their need, their love.
“I love you,” he said in a harsh gasp against her ear, and they came together in a pulsing release that staggered her with its violence.
Afterward, she lay adrift, resting in the circle of his strong arms. When at last she roused herself to lift her head and look at him, he gave her a wide grin.
“You did miss me, didn’t you?”
“Mmmm-hmmm.” She smiled and closed her eyes. “Perhaps you should bar the door. With so many guests in the castle, someone might wander in looking for an empty chamber.”
“You don’t fool me. You just want to look at my bare arse.”
It was true; she did enjoy the view when he went to bar the door. And when he turned around, he looked like a Greek god with the golden light of the brazier shining on the lines of hard muscles of his chest and arms. ’Twas a shame a man who looked like that ever had to wear a shirt.
She sighed with contentment as he lay down beside her and drew her into his arms again.
“ ’Tis good to have you back at Windsor, Jamie Rayburn.”
“So you did not fill your time with Edmund?” he asked, and she knew he was only half joking.
“You are the only man I want,” she said, pressing her face into his neck. “It’s been that way for me from the day you rode into Paris with the king.”
“You didn’t like me much before that, when we met in Caen,” he said with a smile in his voice.
“I was thirteen!”
“I remember you at thirteen,” he said, stroking her cheek. “You were so full of fire, and already so lovely, I am certain you attracted all manner of inappropriate attention.”
She had hated the way men leered at her.
Jamie brushed the hair back from her face and kissed her forehead. “I did not mean to make you frown.”
When she smiled up at him, he lowered his mouth to hers. She sighed with pleasure at the feel of him over her, his hard chest pressed against her breasts. As they kissed, she ran her hands over the long line of his back to the rise of his buttocks and back up again.
His body was more fa
miliar to her than her own. Her fingers went to the scar where a blade had caught him in the side. Each of his battle scars, in an odd way, reassured her that Jamie could face whatever danger fate threw at him and survive. He was the very best of fighters.
After they made love again, she lay awake, waiting for him to renew his demand for pledges and promises. She would agree to what she must.
How much would she have to give up for him? How far would she have to go to keep him?
Jamie told himself he should take it one step at a time. She had told him she did not want him to leave her, ever. That should be enough for now. But it was not. He was done with pretense. He was finished with taking what he could get from her.
He should have pressed his advantage and insisted on an answer before he took her to bed. But seeing her vulnerable made him weak. When she said she missed him, he was ready to forgive her anything. Hearing her say she wanted him inside her sent lust roaring through him. Nothing mattered then except having her naked beneath him. His thoughts were drowned in sensation; making love to her was all he wanted, all he knew.
But after the endless kisses, after the joining of bodies that felt like a joining of their souls, his questions returned. He would have her answer. Her pledge. He did not want her as a lover or mistress—though he most definitely wanted her in his bed. When a man was off fighting, he needed a home to return to. He wanted his to be with her.
“Linnet, it is time we settled matters between us.”
She turned on her side and ran a finger down his chest. “You spoke of promises before,” she said, fixing those deceptively innocent pale-blue eyes on him. “What do you ask of me?”
That was one of the things he appreciated about her: She looked you right in the eye no matter how hard the question.
“I want us to marry.” His heart thundered in his chest as he waited for her answer.
“Are you certain you want me as your wife?”
“ ’Tis not the first time I’ve asked, as you may recall.”
“This is a serious matter. Something we should discuss dressed, I think.”
With that, she got up from the bed and slipped her chemise over her head. What was in the woman’s head?
Knight of Passion Page 16
