Lord of Lyonsbridge

by Ana Seymour

He stood in the doorway and watched her for several long minutes. Her black hair streamed back from her beautiful face, sweet and tranquil now in sleep, with none of the arrogance he’d seen the day she’d first come riding into his stable and into his life.

  He’d felt a little guilty for leaving the Coopers on the road without seeing them to their destination, but as he watched the gentle rise and fall of Ellen’s breasts, he realized that he had somehow expected this encounter. He’d sought and ached for one last meeting with the spirited Norman maid. Their lives would take them on two different roads, but first they would come together one more time.

  He walked over to the bed slowly, not taking his eyes from her. His body was already aroused, but there was a feeling beyond the physical, an emotion that made his breathing shallow and fast.

  He stood over her and traced a finger along her delicate cheek. She stirred, but did not awaken. Though his body was urging otherwise, he was determined not to hurry. He picked up his lute from beside his bed, then walked into the outer chamber. It had been months since he’d played. He’d told Martin that the coming of the Normans had banished the music from his soul. Mayhap this Norman woman had brought it back.

  Taking a seat on his window bench, he idly plucked the strings, remembering how Ellen’s slender fingers had looked playing the instrument on the day he’d caught her in his rooms. Those same fingers had explored his body, tentatively at first, then more boldly, during their one night of love. The memory stirred him again, but still he waited, and began to pick out a tune. It was a ballad about a wood sprite who’d met and made love to a mortal man. Their union was impossible, but the faeries of the forest had agreed to give the lovers one more night of magic before they had to part.

  He’d learned the ballad from a wandering troubadour, who’d claimed that the man had been none other than he himself. His lute had seemed to come alive as the story unfolded, and the handsome young man had left every lady in Lyonsbridge, even Connor’s mother, swooning at his romantic tale.

  Connor gave a little smile at the memory. Those had been good days, before the troubles, days when his parents had expected to live to an old age, reigning over their castle and their lands, watching their sons marry and produce strong grandchildren.

  It was not to be. His parents and Geoffrey were dead, Martin sworn to the church and Connor to his people. But like the troubadour song, he’d been given one more night of enchantment.

  The music seemed to be part of Ellen’s dream. She’d fallen asleep restlessly, her head full of caves and leering outlaws and dreadful images of John Cooper’s thin back being torn to ribbons by the flogger’s lash. But in midsleep the dream had changed to a forest clearing, that faerie circle where Connor had first kissed her, and her body had stirred at the memory.

  Then the faeries were there, dancing to the music of a lute, and she came awake with a start as she realized that the music was not a dream at all.

  She lay still a moment, listening, though she knew it could be none other than he. As the notes filtered in from the next room, she smiled and stretched sensuously. She’d known he would find her here. Subconsciously, she’d been waiting for him all afternoon.

  The music stopped and he appeared in the doorway, looming like a giant in the shadows cast by the single candle. A deep throb had begun within her from the moment she sensed his presence. She had to force herself to think about the world beyond this haven they’d found.

  “The Coopers?” she asked, sitting up.

  He approached the bed. “They’re away safe. I won’t tell you where—” When she frowned he added quickly, “’Tis not because I don’t trust you, Ellen, but only so that you can say with all truth that you know naught of their whereabouts.”

  “Should you not be with them?”

  His eyes were hooded. “I wanted to be sure you were safe.”

  She smiled. “I trow my father’s men are searching for me far and wide, but I’ve never left home.”

  Connor looked around the room. “’Twas a wise plan. On the morrow you should be able to return to the castle and tell your father that the outlaws released you.”

  “Aye.” She swallowed hard as he continued watching her with those sleepy eyes, but made no move to come closer to her. “On the morrow,” she ended in a whisper. The last time they’d been alone together, he’d rejected her, had in fact seemed to resent their coming together. She bit her lip, looking up at him. Had he truly come only to see her safe, and would he now leave to join his friends?

  Then he smiled, slowly and sensually, and she felt it as a swift plunge through her midsection.

  “On the morrow,” he repeated, his voice husky.

  She nodded.

  He lifted the lute he still held in one hand. “Would my lady like some entertainment to make the hours fly by on faster wings?”

  “Mayhap,” she answered with a dry mouth.

  He sat beside her on the bed and gave a tuneless strum across the strings. “Do you prefer adventurous ballads, milady, or sweet songs of love?”

  “Prithee make the choice for me, Sir Minstrel.”

  He plucked out an intricate series of notes, haunting and wild. “Ah, if the choice is left to me, milady, ‘twill be the music of seduction.” His spoken words were as melodious as the music itself.

  A pulse beat steady and strong behind her ears. She closed her eyes and swayed lightly with the unworldly melody, feeling it seep into her. The music of seduction, he’d said. She remembered Sebastian’s words about the horse master’s effect on the village maids. How many had he seduced with his magical fingers?

  Yet at this moment it mattered not. ‘Twas likely this one night alone was all the love she and this Saxon would ever share. She’d not think beyond it, nor of the past. There was only this night, the strains of his lute, the flicker of the candle, the smell of fresh herbs from the smooth coverlet of his bed. She lay back against the mattress and opened her eyes. “Come to me, Connor Brand,” she said.

  Connor’s fingers on the lute slowed into an off-key chord, then another, then stopped. He set the lute carefully down on the floor and said with another slow smile, “At your service, milady.”

  Waves of feeling radiated up her neck at the mere sound of his voice. He put his hands on her shoulders, pressing her deep into the bedding, and lowered his lips to hers. The flare of passion was instantaneous. There was no time for teasing or tenderness. Her mouth opened to his searching tongue and she groaned in impatience.

  His urgency equalled her own. In a frenzy of cloth and laces, they shed their clothing until they lay together skin on skin, the ridge of his manhood already hard against her most sensitive parts. His warm hands made circles on her breasts as he continued his deep, needy kisses. “I’m desperate for you, my love,” he murmured. “I’ve been ready since the moment I came here and saw you asleep in my bed. I’m not sure I can wait any longer.”

  She let her legs fall open and moved her hand to the very lowest portion of his hard back to show her own readiness to receive him. She had no skill in the ways of lovemaking, but the movements came naturally, and soon their two young, strong bodies rocked together in spiraling ecstasy. All feeling pooled into the lower part of her body as he moved into her more deeply and she quaked in completion.

  His head fell heavily on her chest, and she idly trailed her fingers through his soft blond hair. She was filled with an inexpressible emotion. She wanted to burst into tears and laugh with joy at the same time.

  He didn’t move for so long that she finally whispered his name.

  When he raised his head to look at her, it was his cheeks that held the glisten of tears in the light of the candle. The sight made her heart swell inside her chest.

  “I love thee, Ellen of Wakelin,” he said. He sounded shaken.

  Ellen couldn’t answer. Her throat was too full.

  “I’m too heavy, my love,” he said, sounding more like his normal self. He moved off her to one side.

  She pulle
d him back close to her and shook her head, then finally found her voice to say, “I like to feel you there. I like the heaviness of you against me.”

  His head went down on her chest again and they lay in silence for several contented minutes until she asked softly, “Did you mean it?”

  He rolled off her once more and boosted himself up on his elbow to look down at her. “Mean what?” he teased.

  “What you said. You said you loved me.”

  His smile turned brittle. “Aye, vixen. You can add me to your list of conquests, if it pleases you. When you return to your land, you can tell the great lords who worship at your feet that they’re none better than a humble Saxon horseman you once knew.”

  His sarcasm stung after the emotion of the previous moments. “I’d not cite humility as one of your traits, horse master,” she retorted.

  He grinned at her. “Not humble then, say just poor.”

  Ellen thought for a moment before she replied in a more serious vein, “I’m not sure poor is an apt description, either. You’ve books and music and the wild countryside to ride your beautiful horses. I’ll be going back to the stifling court of Louis, where they’ll set me to prattle with his ladies and sew fine stitches the day long.”

  She turned and lifted herself on her own elbow so that she could look directly into his eyes. “Is Sarah poorer than I when she has a wise mother to give advice, brothers and a sister to provide laughter and love, and the devotion of a handsome young man to turn her head?”

  “Sarah and her family are running from the law with their bellies empty of food these two days past. Most would hardly count them as rich.”

  “I would,” Ellen said softly.

  There was an answering gleam in his eyes. “I do love thee, Ellen,” he said again, “though it make me thrice a fool.”

  She loved him, too. She’d known it for a long time, mayhap since the day he’d kissed her at the faerie’s ring of trees. But something kept her from saying it aloud.

  His own declaration had been circumscribed. There had been no pledge of undying devotion, no talk of a future or, indeed, anything beyond this one night. Even if her father would ever countenance such a match, Connor would never agree. She was one of the hated Normans who had deprived him of his birthright and more. Indeed, in spite of his protestation that he loved her, it was possible that his taking of her had been carried out callously, as some kind of personal revenge.

  “What do Saxon men do when they love a maid?” she asked, keeping her voice carefully neutral.

  He sat up suddenly and pushed himself to the top of the bed so that he was leaning against the wall. Then he picked her up and nestled her on his lap. “Same thing as Norman men, I warrant,” he said, beginning to kiss her neck. “Something like this.”

  ‘She could feel him swelling again against her bare bottom, and her body responded to the signals. Desire rose in her anew and she twisted in his arms to give herself over to a new round of passion. But even as she melted under his kisses, deep inside she felt the beginning of an ache.

  Connor Brand was a remarkable man. He had indeed seduced her with his sweet music and his hard body and his masterful lovemaking. He’d said that he loved her, at least for this night, but she found herself wanting more. Her Norman people may have conquered Connor and his fellow Saxons, but it was he who had taken possession of her heart.

  He’d left her shortly after dawn, the emotion of the previous evening nowhere in evidence with the harsh light of morning. She could almost believe that she’d imagined the shine of tears on his cheeks.

  He’d touched her own cheeks once with his callused fingers, and had looked at her a long, hard moment, as though memorizing her features, then he’d gone, silently, like the forest wraiths of his songs.

  She waited the entire morning, wandering dispiritedly, back and forth from his antechamber to the bed they had shared. She tried to interest herself in one of the Latin tomes he kept, but her mind would not focus on the carefully drawn letters.

  By midday she decided that her ruse had continued long enough. She peered carefully from the window of Connor’s room to see that the stable yard was empty, then she descended the stairs and crept out of the stable. When she reached the gates of the castle, the yeoman at the round tower shouted out, and almost immediately his cry was joined by several others. A group of soldiers rushed toward her, exclaiming over her safe return.

  She learned with a flush of guilt that her father was riding in the hunt for her, had in fact been out all night. Sebastian had remained at the castle, to super vise the search efforts, the yeoman guard had informed her.

  “More likely so that he would not miss a good night’s rest,” she muttered to herself, then told the guard to report her safe arrival to her cousin. “I’ll await my father in my quarters,” she told the man, rejecting his suggestion that he immediately escort her to her cousin.

  She had no desire to see Sebastian and listen to more of his oily insinuations, especially when his charges about her feelings for Connor were true. She cared nothing for Sebastian’s opinion, but she loved her father and did not like deceiving him.

  But once she’d enclosed herself inside her bedchamber, she almost regretted the decision not to await her father in the great hall or some place where the normal activity of the castle would keep her thoughts from returning again and again to the night she and Connor had. shared. Indeed, the sight of her chambers and her own bed was like salt on her wound. It was here that Connor had first introduced her to the sensual pleasures a man and a woman could inspire in one another.

  She lay back on her mattress and sighed. She’d come to England with the idea of bringing culture and discipline from a more civilized land, but instead she’d found in the strength of the people here something that went beyond rich tapestries and intricatecourt dances. And she’d found what it meant to feel one’s heart soar at the sight and sound and touch of a man.

  But she could never be part of a family like the Coopers. To her, she would always be their liege lady, due deference and respect, but never affection, and she and Connor had made it plain that, though he professed to love her, their love was destined to remain unfulfilled. His duty and his heart were with his people, and she was a foreigner, a usurper, in his land.

  She turned her face into the mattress, pulled the covers over her head and willed herself to sleep.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “By the law of the land, the feudal lord is obliged to hold an open court and hear evidence in a capital offense,” Father Martin told his brother.

  Connor was reclining on the hard cot in the friar’s bare cell in the abbey complex. “I doubt that Lord Wakelin will put the word of two Saxon children over the reputation of his late, lamented bailiff.”

  “Nay,” Father Martin agreed. “But mayhap ‘twill not be just the Cooper children’s word. There are others in the village who were subjected to Booth’s lechery or were witness to it.”

  Connor shrugged. He knew he should be encouraging Martin, and, indeed, taking as active a part in the investigation as his outlaw status would allow, but he couldn’t seem to muster much enthusiasm for the effort.

  The truth was, he didn’t want to think about the Coopers’ plight, nor Booth’s perfidy, nor Martin’s fact-finding. He wanted to close his eyes and once again picture Ellen’s face as it had looked at the height of their passion. The very thought stirred his body all over again, and he sat up on his brother’s celibate bed and pushed himself against the cold cell wall so that his arousal would not embarrass them both.

  “It’s worth a try, I suppose,” he answered Martin finally. “Though they won’t have a trial without an accused, which means John would have to be taken into custody again. I think I’d put more faith in his chances if he flees the country.”

  “John’s young and able, but what about the rest of the family? And what about you, Con? Are you prepared to live the rest of your life in exile from Lyonsbridge?”

  Better
in exile than to live here as a servant and wait for Ellen to arrive one day as the pampered wife of some high French nobleman, Connor thought. “Forgive my desultory response to your efforts, Martin,” he said finally. “I believe the days of hiding and imprisonment have wearied me.”

  Father Martin studied his brother. “What I see is a weariness of soul, brother, not of body, and I know not what remedy to prescribe. You’ve already rejected my suggestion to cleave more closely to the ways of the Lord.”

  Connor forced a smile. “That be your path, Martin, not mine. If my soul’s weary, ‘tis only from the pain of seeing the people of Lyonsbridge continue to suffer injustice after we’d thought to put all that behind us. The Coopers are a good family and not deserving of such travail.”

  “Then get up off that bed and help me see that things are set to right, Con.” The challenge in his voice reminded Connor of the brother he’d squabbled and competed with as a child, before Martin had taken his vows and become sometimes irritatingly serene. Before the Normans had turned their world upside down. Before a beautiful Norman woman had so seized his head and his heart that all other considerations seemed to pale in comparison.

  He swung his feet around and planted them on the floor, clapping his hands on his knees with sudden resolve. “Aye, brother, you’re right, as usual. ‘Tis past time things were set to right.”

  “I’ll have no argument, Daughter,” Lord Wakelin said sternly. “I can’t put you at risk of another such terrible adventure. You’re going back to Normandy on the morrow. Sebastian will escort you while I stay here to settle this matter of Booth’s murder.”

  Ellen had pleaded, cajoled, threatened once again to flee to a nunnery, but since her father considered her security at risk, he had refused to budge.

  Sebastian had sat in on the discussion with a quiet smile of satisfaction. He’d assured his uncle that he’d see his dear cousin safely back home and then return to aid in bringing to justice the outlaws who were still at large.