by Claudia Dain
"Aye, it has been long, but Sunnandune is mine. I know her. I know what I have in her."
"Nay," he said slowly, seeking forgiveness when he needed none. He had done no wrong. No look in her eyes would convince him otherwise. "You do not know. Your father has—"
"My father has what?" she snarled, pulling free of him, facing him in the rain and the mud, her hair rivers of black twisting over her breasts like beloved vipers.
"You were not here!" he shouted, as if she were to blame for her fostering and for her father's acts. As if he could make her answer for what had happened while she grew to womanhood. "The wars crippled the land. Maud and Stephen strove in war while the country bled. There was no one to stop him. No one to stay his hand."
"What has he done?" she shouted up at him. "Tell me! One truth from you, Hugh; can you manage even one truth?"
"Truth? You want the truth? The truth is he has increased Sunnandune, by any means he could. She now holds forty hides of land and ten knights," he said harshly. He was no liar. Never had he lied to her.
"Forty hides? That is three times more than Sunnandune," she said, staring into the middle distance.
"And ten knights," Hugh said, saying it all.
Elsbeth looked up at him, her eyes solemn and hard. "He promised you the ten."
"And twenty more of his own. Your uncle has promised fifteen and your—"
"Just tell me the total," she said harshly, looking across the rain-soaked land to the swaying trees.
"Between all your father's kin and the kin of your mother, I will return to Jerusalem with sixty-four knights to help us in our fight to save the holy land."
Elsbeth laughed softly and held her face up to the rain, letting the water wash her clean of all false hopes. "You will return to Jerusalem a mighty force with sixty-four knights at your back, my lord. Your king will honor you. Will the knights swear fealty to you, or is that honor to be saved for King Baldwin? Either way, you are increased in power and favor, are you not?"
"Elsbeth," he said, reaching for her.
She let him hold her body, but her heart and mind were far from him. She stood limp beneath his touch and let the rain take her.
"I was to fall into your hands, my heart in your keeping, and when you asked for the ten knights of my Sunnandune, I was to give them to you, was I not? I was to love you with so great a passion that all you asked of me I would give," she said. "Yet it will not be. I have been well tutored in the ways of men, and I will not give up Sunnandune to you or any man. Sunnandune is mine. You bargained with my father," she said stonily. "What else is required of you? I know there is more. I know him well."
Hugh looked at her for a moment and then said, "I am to have Sunnandune's knights and the knights of your kin. Your father wants only Sunnandune. I must deliver Sunnandune to him."
"You were to get Sunnandune for him." Elsbeth let out a sigh of pent-up breath and dropped her gaze to the mud at her feet. "Aye, he would want it; it was the sweetness of that place that made my mother so desirable to him. Now that he has multiplied its worth and might..." Elsbeth looked up at Hugh. "And what of me? What plans were made for me?" Hugh took her hands in his. She pulled away from his touch and looked up at him, her face fierce and hard. "What of me?" she said again, more urgently.
"You were to be in your father's keeping until he found an abbey to your liking." Hugh said. "Did you not say you wanted an abbey life? I thought this would be little to ask of you. You love God as fiercely as I. You only wanted a life of prayer. How could you be harmed by this, Elsbeth?"
"How am I harmed?" she said softly. "I am wed to a man who wants only to rob me of my home and my wealth. I am bargained for between husband and father, my life of little worth beyond what I can surrender to the two men who are charged to care for me."
"No harm would befall you," Hugh said. "You would be safe in the abbey."
"Speak to me no more of abbeys," she said sharply. "I will not relinquish Sunnandune to you, and never to my father. He made that plain to you, did he not? That is why you were required. He bought you, my lord, a pretty toy to distract me while he eased Sunnandune from my grasp. Yet Sunnandune is mine and will remain so. I cannot be tempted to relinquish her."
"And I cannot be tempted to forget what I came to England to find," Hugh said, his voice sharp. "I cannot fail in this. These knights are mine. I have bargained for them, and they will come with me. Jerusalem's need is great, Elsbeth," he said. "The very heart of Christendom is in peril. You can grant me the ten knights of Sunnandune to defend the Levant and all the holy places of that land."
"Can I?" she said, staring up at him, her eyes as black as forest shadows and as dangerous. "Will I? I think not, my lord."
"Why will you not?" he said, shaking her lightly. "It is a small thing and would do much to aid the cause of holy Jerusalem."
"Not to mention the cause of ambitious Hugh of holy Jerusalem," she said, wrenching herself free of him, throwing his hands from her with more force and will than he had ever seen in her. "Am I asked to bare Sunnandune, which I love with as fierce a love as you hold for your shining Jerusalem, of all her knights? Who then will protect her? How can I keep what I cannot hold?"
"Keep the one, then, but give me nine," he said, pressing against her will and her sodden skirts. She was obstinate of a sudden. When had Elsbeth ever planted herself so firm against his will?
"Keep the one? When I now hold forty virgates? And do you even now think that Henry will let Sunnandune stand at forty virgates without looking into the cause of her sudden increase? Pray that my father increased her size lawfully, or all could be lost in the fire of the king's anger."
She pushed away from him, her hands on his chest, but he was done with being pushed away from her. She would give him what he wanted. He did not want much, only the way to a higher place than the one he was born to.
"I can give you nothing, my lord. Your marriage to me was ill-advised," she said sharply, turning from him to walk away. "You bargained badly. Did you not learn better in wondrous Jerusalem?"
She would not walk from him, he vowed. Never in all the planning and plotting had it been possible that Elsbeth would walk away from him.
"You are for the convent," he said harshly, grabbing her arm and turning her to him. She crashed against his chest, and he held her fast against him. "You have wanted the convent from the start. Of what use is Sunnandune to you? Would you have kept it in the abbey?"
"I wanted only to be free of marriage, Hugh; that was my only prayer. I want Sunnandune. She is my home. I have waited for her all my life."
Had all been for naught? Hugh wondered. She would never relinquish Sunnandune, and it was the one thing she must do. He would have served Jerusalem better having stayed there. But he had not. He had come north and he had found Elsbeth. And now he had a wife who could give him nothing. Nothing.
"The road to Jerusalem is open to you. Take it and go home," she said, holding herself stiffly in his hard embrace. "Go home," she whispered as a single tear escaped to join the rain weeping down her face.
Go home? Go home without her? Leave her in England, this maid who was his wife? She had not been the wife he had expected. She had done nothing to win him to her side. She had not sighed or smiled or blushed in tempting modesty. Nay, she had fainted when he kissed her, prayed in competition with him, chided him for his vanity, and submitted unwillingly to every touch and kiss and stroke upon her skin. 'Twas not the way to win a man.
And he was not won. He could not have been won for so little cause and by such a solemn and stalwart maid. He had known women of greater beauty and sweetness, greater wealth and docility; it was not in him to fall for this chilly, formidable, vulnerable English damsel. And he had not fallen. He would not fall.
Yet he must touch her. Even now, when all looked lost, he had to touch her.
He had needed a wife because he had needed the right to claim knights of England for a holy cause, that was all. There was no more to him. He
was Poulain, a knight of Outremer, and that was all. He had nothing to give a wife, and he needed nothing from a wife. Not even this wife. Not even Elsbeth.
"And when I go home, where will you go?" he said, lifting her high against him, feeling the soft weight of her breasts against his chest, hearing the hammered beating of her heart. Tormenting her. Taunting her. Tempting her. "How will you hold Sunnandune in the legal trials ahead? How will you hold her against the claim your father will surely press?"
"I will," she said softly, closing her eyes to the sight of him. But she could not keep him from her. She could not ignore the feel of him against her, the pure male power of the man she had freely wed in divine ceremony.
He kissed her throat, and she swallowed hard against his touch. Her hair hung down, wet and slick, and he pulled it with a single hand. Her throat arched back, exposed, and he kissed her hard, biting, letting the rain wash away the sting of him.
"And what of the abbey? What of a life devoted to prayer?" he murmured against her skin, shouting down the shame he felt at what he was urging her to do. He was Poulain. Nothing more. He needed the knights pledged to her. Nothing more. "If you give Sunnandune to me, I will see you settled in the abbey of Fontrevault. Think, Elsbeth; you could pray away your days, across the channel from Gautier. Is that not a life worth considering?"
She breathed a sigh and shook her head against his touch and his words, but he would not let her escape him.
"You know nothing of what I want," she said.
She smelled of rain and wood and wool, like wind and forest in the night, like the very earth itself. Natural. Warm. Dark. He buried his face in her and breathed hard, his mouth opening upon her like a babe's first breath, hurried and urgent and necessary.
That was wrong. She could not be necessary. Only Baldwin was necessary. Only Jerusalem was urgent and urgently in need. His own needs did not signify. He could have no needs beyond the fulfillment of his vow.
But he needed her. In this moment, this now, he needed her.
It was her worst betrayal of all. She had made him need her. Made him want her. Tempted him to forget the beauty of golden Jerusalem in her dark embrace. Tempted him to stay.
"Aye, I do know. I know your wants very well," he said, holding her hard against him, pressing against her stubborn will.
"Sunnandune is mine," she said, trying to twist free of him. She was too small for that. He could hold her until the end of time. She would not work free of him. "I will not abandon Sunnandune."
"Not abandon her? You have not seen her for a decade," he said, setting her feet upon the ground and holding her hands in his, trapped. "Give her to me. I will see that all is well with Sunnandune while you are in the abbey."
She opened her eyes and looked hard into his. She shook the water from her eyes and shook back her hair. "You will keep Sunnandune, but you will relinquish me?" She laughed softly and her eyes flooded with sudden tears. "You must think me a fool, my lord. I will give you nothing. You will take nothing from me. Nothing," she said on a croak of emotion.
"Nothing?" he said, grinning without a trace of humor or goodwill.
She took the very heart of him, the part that made him a man, the vow he had made to Baldwin, and pressed it into the mud with every word she spoke. She would give him nothing? Oh, aye, that was true. She had given him nothing from the moment he had set his eyes upon her, but that was over. She would give him something. In that instant, it was the one and only thing he wanted from her, and he would have it.
Let Baldwin and his wishes wait; Hugh was done with waiting.
"Oh, you can and will give me something, little wife. You will give me what I have wanted of you from the start."
"I have nothing. There is nothing," she said, pulling hard against his hands. A fruitless resistance. He pulled her close to him, towering over her.
"I want you, Elsbeth," he said, his voice a whisper of raw intent "I want your body under mine. I want your breath in me. I want your skin red with my caresses. I want your blood to cover me."
"Nay, I cannot give you that," she said, her eyes wide and black, like the very night itself.
"Then do not give," he said slowly. "I will take what I want from you."
Chapter 21
He was done with words. Done with vows. Done with careful, measured living. He had lost all. He would not lose this.
He dragged her by her hands, bound within his own, dragged her to the edge of the wood. Her feet slipped in the mud, her gown was soiled past knowing its color. Her hair was a tangled mass of black that hung around her face and torso like the fabled banshee of old.
He did not care. Let her curse him. Let her pray him into hell when this was done.
He would have her anyway.
She was his wife. He had the right to take her. God help him, he had the will. Nothing she could say would stop him from this course.
Elsbeth said nothing to stop him; she only planted her feet and refused to walk to her own deflowering. He did not find that odd. He knew his wife as well as any man could know a woman. She would endure what was to come. She would not fight outright, yet she would not quite submit. Such was Elsbeth.
He did not care for any but his own needs, his own wants. He was miles past caring. Let her fear; she would learn that there was nothing to fear, learning what every woman since Eve had learned.
All had been denied him, including this. But no more. He would have her.
Holding her, trapping her, he ripped at the laces of her bliaut.
"I want to see your skin. I want to see it in the rain. I want to see your nipples rise in the cold, and I want to warm them with my mouth," he said. His voice was guttural. He hardly recognized himself. Well, he was far from Jerusalem, the place that had shaped him. He did not know himself in this strange land of water and cloud.
He did not care.
All he knew of himself was the wanting of her.
"Stop," she said, shivering in the cold. Or perhaps she trembled in fear. He did not care which. All caring had been washed out of him, leaving nothing but the fire of passion and need.
"Nay," he said.
"You will not stop?" she asked, her voice small and wet. He did not look to see if there were tears. He did not care if she cried.
"Nay, I will not stop," he said, peeling her bliaut from her shoulders and pushing the sodden fabric down. It was heavy going, but he was a knight of the Levant; he was more than a match for wet clothes on a frightened maid.
The linen of her shift was transparent in the rain and thin as a veil. Her nipples were dark and hard against the white of it, her skin slick with rain and cold to his touch. He looked quickly up at her face. Her eyes were closed, pressed tight against the world, her pulse racing in her throat. Her lips trembling.
"I am your husband," he said.
He did not need to say it. They both knew he had the right to her. They both knew his taking of her was long past due.
"I am your wife," she said, and he heard the pleading in her voice. She was his wife and he was stripping her bare along a well-trod track, taking her along the edge of a wood in the mud of incessant rain.
He did not care.
All he wanted was the feel of her around him, beneath him, part of him. He wanted her heat and her lightness and even her fear. Whatever he could have of her, that he would take, without regret. Without shame. Without guilt.
He had to have her. She had to adjust herself to it. There was no more to it than that.
"Then be my wife and give yourself to me," he said, pushing her down into the wet grass and mud that bordered the wood.
"You would take me here? Now?" she said, trying to lift herself up, trying to keep herself clean of the mud.
"I would take you anywhere, Elsbeth," he said, staring into her eyes. He wanted her too much to stop, too much to think or reason or hesitate. "Even now."
"Why?" she said, her legs pressed together against his seeking hand. "Is it because I will not give you Sunn
andune?"
"It is because you will not give me yourself," he said, knowing it was the truth the moment the words left his lips. "There is no thought in me for Sunnandune. Not now. Now, it is only you. Only us."
Her breasts were bared to him, white and soft in the rain, her veins blue in the cold. Her bliaut was tangled with her shift, twisted and wet; he could not free her of it. Well, he would take her as any eager man took a woman, by the simple lifting of her skirts, plunging into her warmth when all the world was cold and dark. So it would be with Elsbeth. She was his wife. He had the right to her dark heat. There was no sin in this, no matter the look in her eyes.
'"In the mud you will take me," she said hoarsely. "Is that the way of it in Outremer?"
He pulled her hands from her skirts, holding her down, lifting the heavy weight of wet wool from her legs. He bared her legs and hips, until he could see all. Her linen wrapping blocked him. Ever it blocked him, but no more. Not now.
"Aye, in the mud and rain and even in blood will I take you. Set your mind to it, wife. I have it not in me to wait another hour for you. Make your peace with it."
He tore at her wrapping, ripping it from her, pulling it off her, this shield that had defeated him for so many days. She would have that shield no longer. He would prick her, marking her always as his. She could hide in the abbey for a hundred years and she still would be his.
The wrapping came free. White but for a tiny spot of old blood. She no longer bled.
"You were ready for me," he said, accusing her.
"I bled just this day," she said, swallowing hard, facing his anger. She was bared to him now. There was no more escape for her. "I was bleeding this dawning."
"But you are not bleeding now. God is good," he said, and the very way he said it seemed to deny the certain truth of that statement.
"But not to me," she said, holding her face up to the rain, staring into the sodden sky.
"Will you fight me?" he asked, ignoring her blasphemy. Even that would not stop him. He wanted her beyond the reach of kings and angels.
