“I can imagine,” she murmured, gray eyes liquid with sympathy.
“Perhaps I couldn’t have held them, but I never even tried. Instead I urged them on. When we broke through the gates, the men went berserk. They slaughtered the defenders, ravened through the streets, fired the houses, killed everyone—killed women and children—just as the devi ls killed ours. And I did naught to stop it.”
She sat white and silent, her gaze unflinching. Soon she would recoil in disgust. How could she do otherwise, his honor-bound lady?
“When I returned to my senses, they’d . . . butchered them all . . . everyone we found inside those walls. I ordered it stopped, but too late. Due to my poor control—my failure—they lay like slaughtered lambs in bloody heaps around us. The Saracens recall it to this day. It’s why they call me the Devil of Damascus. That day strengthened their resolve to resist the Christian conquest.”
“This was why you resigned your command,” she whispered, with sorrowful eyes. “This was why you renounced God to become the Raven, a nameless mercenary. ’Twas in penance for that day.”
“I can never do penance enough.” He stared at her, self-hatred churning in his belly.
She stood against it, chin lifting with that swift pride of hers. His heart swelled for her courage, even while he said the words that would drive her away.
“I can’t allow that to happen again. My so-called love destroyed everything decent, in Damascus. Now you see the truth of me, this wretch you were forced to marry. Give your love to another man, Alienore—one who’s worthy of it.”
“Nay!” The pure light of faith shone from her like a lamp. “You have never forgiven yourself for that day. But Christ’s power to forgive—by whatever name you call him—exceeds our capacity. If you ask for forgiveness, Jervaise, if you ask for grace and mercy, you will find the salvation you seek.”
Incredulous, he stared at her pleading face. After all he’d told her—after the horrors he’d never revealed to another living soul—still she persisted in this asinine belief? Somehow he must make her understand.
“So your convent nuns would say,” he jeered. “Don’t deceive yourself, Alienore. I’m beyond salvation.”
“You seek it daily,” she whispered, tears spilling from her eyes. “What else drives you to save your people? What else led you to save Vulgrin from his captors, save my life, save Remus, serve your king with such dogged devotion? With every day that passes, you receive another sign of God’s grace at work in your life. Do you not see it? He will give you the forgiveness you seek, but you must also forgive yourself.”
“Impossible.” Anger erupted at her stubborn faith in her God—and him. “Why waste your love on a man like me? Can’t you understand I’ll leave you? I tell you I’m beyond saving!”
“Have no fear.” Through the tears shining on her cheeks, she gave him a tremulous smile. “If you will not save yourself, Jervaise de Vaux, then I shall save you.”
To his stunned disbelief, she wrapped her arms around him and kissed his cheek. Fiercely resisting the comfort he would never deserve, he tried to push away. Yet his accursed flesh would not obey him. Instead of pushing her away, he crushed her in his arms.
He felt the strength of her warrior’s body, her yielding softness as he dragged her against his chest and kissed her. Tasted the salt dampness of tears as her lips parted, giving herself to him. Blocking out the voices of guilt and grief, he plundered her honeyed sweetness, and her mouth welcomed his. A shudder swept through her as she clung, her lavender fragrance filling his head, the tight nubs of her nipples burning him through her shift.
Even while the dark voices screamed at him to release her, he was fumbling with her shift. Allah save him—she was helping, kneeling to straddle him, breaking the kiss to pull the shift over her head and toss it aside, casting aside a maid’s modesty to push him back against the mattress. Naked, she crouched over him in a fever of madness, tasting and nipping down his throat.
Helpless to deny her, he skimmed her supple back, muscle rippling beneath his touch. When he pulled her against the insistent throb of his cock, she let him, her breasts searing his chest. With a growl he pulled her forward, cupping, kneading her fullness. Suckled hard, flicking with his tongue and biting gently until she cried out.
“Sweet mercy—” Her fingers gripped his hair until his scalp burned.
Then her hand circled his engorged length and blasted every coherent thought from his brain. Never had his virginal bride displayed such boldness in their bed. When she brushed his swollen tip where moisture gathered, he strained against imminent release.
Her confidence grew as she cupped his aching member and tightened her grip. He leaped and pulsed in her hand as she stroked, finding a pressure and rhythm destined to drive him mad. To prolong the pleasure, resist the impulse to roll her beneath him and bury himself inside, he continued to suckle, drawing hard until she panted.
“No more of this torture,” he rasped. “Put me inside you, love.”
With gritted teeth he contained himself while she fitted him to her womb. She fumbled a bit, his manhood sliding against her hot, slick folds. The musky odor of their shared arousal perfumed the air as she took him into her tight passage.
His deep groan of pleasure mingled with hers as he thrust. She gripped him, slick with their shared pleasure, and rode him. She learned the rhythm as she’d learned the sword, hair streaming in golden disarray, head tilted back, eyes lidded with desire. He reveled in her sensuality, her new boldness. Yet he would wait until she found her own peak.
He thrust deep, every nerve attuned to her, the focused intensity of her features, the pattern of her quickened breath. Until she shuddered violently and cried out. Spasms of release swept through her, and he surrendered to his own release.
When she collapsed upon him, their bodies still joined, he closed his arms around her. Her fragrant hair tumbled over his face.
He had failed her utterly. His confession had not discouraged her love. To the contrary, she embraced his sins—and sealed his fate. Against all his intentions, flying against a lifetime of bitter regret, he’d fallen in love with his lion-hearted duchess.
Allah help him. He would leave her to save her, before his love destroyed them both.
Chapter Twenty-one
Jervaise left at dawn, but the closing door roused her from slumber. As sunrise spilled into the sky, Alienore watched him canter away with his turbaned squire.
Today was Good Friday—the darkest day, the ultimate trial, the day Christ died for men’s sins. A surge of foreboding broke over her.
Mooning after your husband like a lovesick fool! He only goes to Lyonstone to raise the king’s levy.
Shaking off her qualms, she squared herself to put her shabby home to rights.
Before noon, her household came streaming back—released to her service, as Jervaise had demanded. Their careworn faces familiar as her own reflection, her only family during the lonely years after Theobold rode off on crusade, taking her brother with him. Cries of joy proclaimed their return.
“God save us, milady!” Egfrida the cook folded Alienore against her ample bosom. “Young master told us ye’d never coom back. Right glad we are to see him proved wrong.”
Soon industrious hands were putting the hall to rights. They swept out the befouled rushes, scattered fresh grass sweet with tansy to cover the stench. Then mended the damaged roof in the north tower, where rain drenched the floor.
Alienore was grateful for the tasks that demanded her attention, though nothing could divert her thoughts from Jervaise. At last she could name the demons that ravaged his soul and carved those lines of bitterness in his face. Guilt, grief, the terrible weight of self-hatred—for events that occurred a lifetime ago.
He said he could never love again. He said he’d renounced God, plunged his immortal soul into peril. But she refused to believe that, not when she sensed his torment. Once Jervaise de Vaux had been her enemy. Now he was the man she loved w
ith all the passion stored in her valiant heart. He was her love, and she would save him.
When the shadows deepened, she glanced up. She was kneeling before the hearth while the potboy shimmied up the chimney to clear bird’s nests from the flue.
Brushing off her skirts, she rolled her head against her shoulders to loosen the knots from her labors. Massaging the back of her neck, she hurried to the door.
On the mural stair Raoul stood braced between his crutches. A frown creased his face as he squinted through a curtain of drizzle.
“By my faith, has Jervaise not returned?” Disquiet rippled through her.” ‘Twill be dark soon—and a storm coming, if I read the wind aright.”
“No doubt he found a great deal to discuss with the young earl. Your brother has done little to prepare for war.”
“He has been ill, I am told.” She made excuses for Benedict from habit. “With an experienced soldier like Jervaise to guide him, my brother shall do well enough.”
Raoul cocked her a dubious look.
“Come out of the rain, old friend.” She smiled. “No doubt by the time our fish is on the table, Jervaise will return to eat it.”
Yet her husband did not return.
After supper she stood again in the doorway, a candle guttering in her hand, and peered into the night. Rain fell steadily from the leaden skies, pounding the bailey into a sea of mud.
An evil night to be abroad, and Jervaise a stranger to these lands. One of the hated Norman conquerors, alone with an infidel squire in a land seething with Saxon loathing, even a hundred years after the Conquest.
“Ooh, milady, come out of this mizzle.” Nesta hurried to fling a cloak over her.
“My lord is late returning.” Unwilling to abandon her post, she lingered.
“There’s a right proper storm blowing up. Maybe he stayed with yer brother?”
“He would never rest willingly beneath the same roof as Sir Bors, of that I am certain. And who could blame him?” She strained to listen for hoofbeats over the rain, while thunder muttered overhead.
“I vow I do not like this, Nesta.”
After a worried consultation with Raoul, she sent a pair of guardsmen to meet Jervaise, lest he lose his way on the unfamiliar road. She stood in the pouring rain to instruct them, the rising wind tearing at her skirts. Whining in his throat, Remus milled around her legs.
Absently, she scrubbed his damp ruff as the guardsmen pounded off into the darkness. A flash of lightning bathed the road in its harsh glare. With a yelp, the wolf scurried indoors.
“Come inside, my lady,” Raoul called. “This is an evil wind.”
And somewhere, my love is lost in it.
In the stark light of morning, the grim-faced guardsmen returned alone, exhausted and mud spattered from a night of fruitless hunting. Grainy eyed after her own white night, Alienore fought back rising panic and forced herself to hear their report.
They had combed the roads between the manor and Lyonstone Keep, but any physical trace of Jervaise’s passing had been pounded away by the storm. They’d sought to query the earl, but he would not deign to speak with lowly men-at-arms. The report made her simmer.
Yet Benedict’s castellan unbent enough to inform them Ormonde had spent the day at Lyonstone and set forth before sunset. He had not been seen since.
Her stomach sank as she stared into the men’s exhausted faces and saw her fears mirrored in their eyes.
“You have done well, my friends,” she said. “Take some rest and hot mead to revive you. I will go to Lyonstone myself and speak to my brother.”
After a difficult gallop along the storm-churned road, she stared up at her childhood home. It too seemed diminished, somehow less than the shining castle of her memories. Beneath lowering skies, a sinister mist shrouded the heights. Through the gaping mouths of murder-holes and arrow loops, hostile eyes tracked their approach.
“Hail the house!” she cried, rising in her stirrups to glance around warily.
The jagged-toothed battlements chewed at the heavens. A thicket of turrets thrust like spears over the curtain wall to pierce the weeping sky. The moat’s brown waters, thick with sludge, lapped the drawbridge as she thundered across with Raoul at her heels.
She had resisted dragging the old knight into the wet, but he refused to let her ride without him. Remus loped along behind, his nose and ears busy with unfamiliar scents and sounds. Unfortunately, he’d smelled nothing on the rain-washed road, though she’d given him Jervaise’s scent.
The keep should have stood closed and guarded in these uneasy times. To her outrage, the gates hung ajar and the portcullis was rusted open. When no one answered, dread gnawed at her gut.
In the bailey, a huddle of outbuildings looked sullen with neglect. The smithy stood cold and dark when it should have burned bright, forging swords and armor. The buttery door was smashed to splinters, revealing an overturned table and dusty shelves where once the Lyonstone cheeses were pressed.
A muddy tangle of dogs snapped and quarreled before the donjon. They paused to growl at Remus, who crouched with hackles raised. She called the wolf to her and searched the debris-littered courtyard with dismay.
Why did no sentries prowl the allure, no English longbows stand guard against the hostile north? Only a trickle of smoke from the kitchens betrayed any sign of habitation. While the countryside bristled with war, Lyonstone Keep stood all but abandoned.
Saint Swithun save me, this is worse than I feared. I should never have stayed away so long.
“This place is little more than a ruin,” she murmured. “How long has it been so?”
“I know not, my lady,” Raoul said. “My bones ached so with the cold this winter that I barely stirred from the manor. I heard worrisome stories, yet I never dreamed the keep stood in such a dismal state.”
“Scots William will find us easy pickings.” Alarm sparked within her. “By my faith, I do not know what Benedict can be thinking, but I intend to find out.”
Jumping down, she tossed her reins to Raoul. “Wait here for me, old friend.”
“Little good would I be unhorsed,” he said tightly. “Take the wolf with you. I’ll call on my hunting horn if danger threatens.”
Mounted and armed with his crossbow, the old knight still made a formidable foe. Standing on his own, braced between his wooden crutches, he could be little help—and knew it.
Determined to show no fear, she whistled Remus to her side and strode toward the donjon. The iron-bound door swung open at her touch, and she walked forward into darkness.
She found her brother alone, huddled in the earl’s canopied chair before a struggling scrap of fire, a ratty bearskin clutched about him. His feverish eyes glittered while she asked her questions and held her tongue over sharp observations about the keep’s neglect. Explaining the situation curtly, she fought to refrain from shouting accusations that would only rouse her brother’s ire.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Benedict said. “Aye, your duke was here. Indeed, he made himself tiresome. Insisted on cataloging every sword in the armory, every trained sword arm, my siege provisions, maps and battle plans. Didn’t seem to think I knew my own business—me, the Earl of Lyonstone.”
No doubt you do not.
But she could not afford to quarrel with Benedict now. “When did he depart?”
“I don’t recall.” Meeting her glare, he coughed and clutched his bearskin. “Oh, very well. Late afternoon I suppose, with that evil-looking heathen he calls a squire. The storm was rolling in, so I offered him hospitality. But he spurned me—thought he could beat the weather back. Said that his lady awaited him.”
His eyes lingered on her mud-spattered boots. Clearly he thought her no lady at all. Fighting for patience, she clenched her fists.
“Brother, he did not return. He is a foreigner in our land—”
“And a Norman, curse them all to hell.”
“Our own mother was Norman, Benedict.” She struggled to keep her voic
e level. “This sudden disappearance in the midst of the king’s business is most unlike him.”
“Send men out to search, then—if the man cannot cross five miles of good road without losing his way.”
“I have no men to send.” She spoke through her teeth, straining not to heap the blame for that injustice atop his clueless head. “Will you loan me the men to search?”
“You can take them from the levy he insisted we call. I told him he was starting at shadows . . .”
“You call it starting at shadows to defend our borders? He undertakes the measures you should have ordered months ago.”
“You seem very fond of Ormonde, sister—a most tender and proper wife.” He hunched in his chair like a baleful turtle. “’Tis a pity you were not so dutiful when I arranged this marriage. Would have saved us both a deal of trouble.”
“You would have wedded me to a maudlin drunkard! You disregarded our sire’s dying wish—” She bit back the furious words that bubbled on her tongue. “But that is past now, Benedict. Jervaise may be injured. He may require our aid—”
“So what if he is? A half-Norman, half-Saracen cutthroat who sells his sword to the highest bidder. All men knew the Raven in the Holy Land. D’you know the story of Damascus, sister?”
In despair she stared at the stranger before her—her cherished little brother, blood of her blood, the golden youth who had ridden so proudly on crusade. Two nights ago he’d seemed almost sane—confused and exhausted, certainly, but hardly the fretful invalid who glared at her now.
“Oh, Benedict.” Kneeling, she caught his hand in hers—dry and hot, as if a fever consumed him. “What has happened to you? Was it the horror of war or our father’s death?”
“Our father?” His fingers clutched her. “Our father? Can you still not know?”
Dread tightened like a fist around her heart. “What do I not know?”
“Nay,” he whispered, staring with strange pity. “You truly do not know. Sister—for you are still my sister, no matter what else men call you. I will not disown you.”
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