It wasn’t that he lacked the courage to face me. It was that he couldn’t face himself.
In public he indulged in all the lustful thoughts about me he could never make reality in private. On holy days, I sat at his side at the feasts and he fed me from his trencher. Wherever he could under the eyes of his men he filled his hands with me, nuzzled me, and ran his lips over whatever bare skin he could find.
It wasn’t pretense. What began as duty turned quickly enough to lust and ended in a perverse and desperate love. Maybe he compensated in his heart for what he couldn’t accomplish in bed.
Mine would have been a pathetic life if I’d had to rely on Mark to fulfill it. As it was, Des, with no other duties as a guest of the castle save to train a squire or two, spent the days with me. We rode the cliffs and picnicked by the sea. Each day he shared a little more of himself with me, and I learned of Herne his father and of his great love, Brinn, who’d left him broken when she’d chosen another—or rather two others at first, it seemed—men of arms, who’d made her heart sing.
“Are you not afraid that by loving me, it will be as Brinn all over again?” I asked gently.
The loss and devastation so raw in Des’ face and voice would have undone me if not for the words he spoke. “I have no regret for loving her. Without her, I would never have known the utter joy I found with her, never known my own heart’s depths. She lessoned me in what love could mean and each lesson she taught I cherish to this day. Had I known in our beginning that we were doomed, I still would not have changed a moment of it.”
“I cannot lay with you again,” I told him, not wishing to become another Brinn for him.
“So you said before we found ourselves in our cave by the sea. Never is a very long time—and fae are very patient.”
“And if we were to remain chaste forever?” I persisted.
“I should love you still.” He shrugged in helplessness. “How could I not?”
“Do you still love Brinn?”
His wistful smile nearly broke my heart. “How could I not?”
In the evenings, I heard Des’ hound haunting the woods—Morois, as the Cornish named them—about Tintagel.
We touched still and kissed like brother and sister. Sometimes I would hold him in my lap, naked, his clothes piled neatly by, and he would shift in my arms. I never tired of that miracle, of the great trust he had in me to keep his secret safe.
Occasionally Tris joined us on our rides, but had duties to attend—disputes to settle, nobles to appease, and coffers to help fill. His nights, though—the ones I didn’t spend with Mark—were all for me. Pleasant summer nights we spent in the king’s courtyard. On nights when the weather turned, he came to my bower, making his way with all stealth to my bed.
Des alone knew of our trysts. As much as he trusted me to keep his secret so I trusted him to keep ours. I knew his rage and his jealousy, but I also knew his heart.
I had thought the spell of my mother’s potion might wear off and diminish with time. But each night Tris and I came together, the urgency and passion seemed to grow. We grew bold in our intimacies, abusing the bed, the garden wall, the garden benches in every imaginable delight possible.
Sometimes, I would think, Des watched.
“What if,” I asked into Tris’ mouth as I knelt over him on one of the benches on a moonless night, “we asked Des to join us?”
Not even sure whether I myself was jesting or not, I followed the play of emotions across Tris’ face—open shock that I would suggest it, a narrowing of his eyes as he questioned whether I meant it, wonderment as he peered deeper into my eyes considering the possibility of it.
I twitched a muscle around him and he gasped.
“Maybe,” he whispered, his breaths deepening. “Later. I’m not done with you myself yet.” Then he was proving it as I rode him through the starred sky.
Later would be soon enough.
~ ~ ~
“You and Tris have to be more careful,” Des told me on Lammas Day as we sat on a rocky shore. A sharp scent of brine pounded in with the surf. “Mark has another nephew, Andret—”
“—I’ve met him. Petty and ambitious. Tris knows he wants the throne, but Mark has little love for him.
“Maybe not now.” He clasped my hand between his. “But Andret is eager to curry Mark’s favor. And he may have discovered a way.” Des looked pointedly at me. I should have guessed the words to come but I was too blinded by bliss to even think our secret might be endangered. “A rumor was let fly yesterday that Tris is cuckolding the king.”
I went still, my hand cold between Des’ warmth. “Who would believe him? What proof—?”
“He only needs Mark to doubt. From a tiny crack a great rift may grow. All that either of you do—where you go, for how long, with whom—will be suspect at least for a time.”
“And what of us?” I cried in frustration. “Here, alone. We make no secret of it when we ride out.”
“Much as I desire to be, I’m not the one who is cuckolding the king. Besides,” his wry grin stilled my protests, “the court has little reason to think I have designs on any woman. I may have let spread my own rumor about the sex I prefer for the person whom I bed. We are safe, you and I. Not so you and Tris.”
Had he only been indulging this rumor, then, when he propositioned Tris on my wedding night?
“Andret is vigilant now and the courtyard walls are… accessible. He will have spies of the knights, of the staff, of your own handmaids, perhaps. Not everyone is so enamored of peace with Ireland as Mark nor of Tris as you.”
“Are you saying we shouldn’t even see one another?” My chest constricted in panic at the thought.
“For a week, yes. Two would be better. A month best of all. Let Andret grow bored with the waiting.”
“There has to be another way.”
“Short of slaying Andret and anyone else he’s wooed into his conspiracy, I can think of none. Go to the king for the next few nights. Prove your loyalty is to Cornwall.”
I shook my head. Panic ate at me, nor for anything Andret might do, but for being reft of Tris. “You don’t know what you ask!”
Des was all patience with me, unreasonable as even I knew myself to be. “That’s Isolde’s spell that preys upon you. Nothing more. Believe me, Yseult, I—”
“Believe you? The very air you breathe is tainted with deceit.” Some demon took hold of me then, spoke with my mouth and forced vile thoughts into my head. “You’re so adept at lies and rumors, perhaps it was you who whispered ‘betrayal’ into Andret’s ears.”
“Yseult—”
“You want us apart. Need us apart. Only when we’re apart will you have a chance at either of us. Who do you really want more—me or Tris? Or does it even matter, so long as you have one of us to slake yourself upon?”
Des’ jaw hardened. “Two months, Yseult. Two months I have gone without you. If I were so desperate as you claim I could have taken you on any day. Could take you right here, right now on this very shore, if I answered only to my body’s desire. I don’t ask you to stop loving Tris or he to stop loving you. I ask only that you be wise if you wish to continue loving one another. Believe what you will, but Andret is your enemy here, not me.”
Soul-deep, where my demon could not go, I knew Des was true, that he warned me only to keep me—and Tris—safe. To have accused him of anything more…
“Forgive me,” I wept, and laid my head on his shoulder. He shivered at the touch. As his arms circled me tenderly in comfort and consolation, I almost wished he would take me right here, right now, on this very shore.
Because that was the lie still between us—that we could continue to deny each other forever.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
YSEULT
We met in the courtyard at midnight, Tris and I. One last rendezvous until…
“I’ll beg Mark to send Andret away,” I said.
“Under what pretext?”
“Are the whims of a queen no
t enough?”
Tris either missed the exasperation in my voice or was being deliberately dense. “Not in this court.” He cupped my chin. “There are always wedding or tourneys to be attended. We’ll find a way to send him off as emissary soon enough. In the meantime, I don’t wish to waste this night when I don’t know when I’ll get to hold you next.”
His kiss drove away all thoughts of conspiracies and danger. Pent with passion, we moved slowly, in direct opposition to the craving need that pounded through our veins. Overdress and tunic fell first, cascading easily to the grass. Slippers and boots came next and we laid them by with care. With teasing slowness, Tris lifted my undertunic over my head and dropped it beside my gown. Dropping his head, he lavished the peaks of first one breast and then the other, his hands wandering to the small of my back, then lower to cup the rounded fullness of my hips.
My hands crept to the space between us and worried at the knot of his lacings till his breeches were undone and he could kick them free. As always, he was already risen in worship of me.
I took him in my hands, length and weight so dear and familiar to me now. Stepping over him, I guided him to me, welcoming him inside with a sudden rush as he thrust up just to hear my gasp. Smiling together, we began the slow rhythm of this last dance.
“Yseult! Tristan! Flee!” Des’ loved voice shouted in the dark.
Cries and the ring of steel on steel broke the night.
My mind knew to obey, but my body, locked to Tris’, was slow to heed. The surprise in Tris’ eyes turned to rage as I put my hands to his chest and pushed him away. I bent for my shift, but Tris grabbed my hand and pulled me to the far wall. “No time!” No sword, either, I recalled. We had grown that complacent.
On the other side of the courtyard men spilled over the wisteria. Fair as a wight in the sliver of moonlight, Des clambered down among them, swinging his sword, giving us what time he could for us to make good our escape.
Tris leaped lightly to the top of the stone wall. The arm he reached back to me bulged with muscle and strength, safety in this nightmare that swarmed about us. Without hesitation, I clung to that arm as he lifted me up.
Then rough hands were dragging at me. A pair. Two. Three. A fourth man leapt to the wall beside Tris and steel glinted in the starlight. Even flesh so superb as Tris’ was no match for steel.
“Run!” I cried, letting go the safety of his arm and falling back into the tangle of arms and hands that clutched at me with maddened disgrace.
For the briefest moment Tris looked over my head and nodded. His eyes fell back on me as he leapt backward off the wall, the fourth man’s sword narrowly missing him as it bit out before the man jumped after him.
“Courage!” Tris cried from behind the wall. Then he was gone.
Frantically I craned my neck to find Des.
Three swords pressed him against the wall. Another man crouched over a gut wound nearby. Blood slashed across Des’ face and I feared for more wounds still. His emerald eyes flashed my way.
“Go!” I implored him. None were fiercer than Des in rage, save perhaps Tristan, but six swords to one were impossible odds.
With a roar, he beat back the swords threatening him, giving him space to scale the wall behind with preternatural grace.
Tris and Des—escaped!
My heart beat that happy refrain even as the three men who had challenged Des joined the three in whose grasps I, naked, hung.
Another figure appeared and the intimately wandering hands that held me found more appropriate work. “‘Come to the courtyard at midnight,’ I was told. ‘You’ll find Tristan and Yseult there.’” King Mark’s face was stricken, his voice profoundly sad. “I didn’t—couldn’t—believe it. And yet here you both are with a third to guard your secret trysts.”
“You mistake,” I said.
“Naked, caught in the very throes of the passion of which you’re accused, and you denounce it all?”
“Andret set this up. It is he who would betray your throne, my King.”
“Have you a champion to defend such claims?”
Both my champions had just disappeared. I didn’t know when—or even if—they would return. Mark could see that as plainly as I.
“Put her in her shift,” he said wearily. “My Lady, without a champion to defend you, you will burn at Monday’s dawn.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
TRISTAN
Yseult.
Her name pounded through me with each step that drove me further from her. Each time I tried to circle back, the man who’d followed me cut me off. Sharp rocks in the clearings and deadfall in the woods ravaged my bare feet as I ran.
Keeping the castle always in sight, I circled it, desperate for a way back in.
Then Des was there behind me and the man with the sword crumpled under a backhand blow from Des’ heavy hilt. Wrenching the sword from the man’s limp hand, he threw it to me even as he stripped off the man’s thigh-length tunic, tossing it my way as well.
“Come,” Des commanded. But it was away from the castle he wished me to run.
“No! Yseult!”
“The king has her. She is beyond our swords for now.”
“Do you think I care?”
He caught me easily as I tried to struggle past him. “Listen to me. Mark calls for a champion or she burns within the week.”
“And champion I’ll be if you’ll let me by! Who in Tintagel can best me?”
“Think! Mark will know that. He’ll search among his allies for another man or six of deeds to stop us. This is as much for pride and honor as Yseult’s life. You know I love her as much—if not more—than you.”
I bristled at that, but this was not the time for that debate.
“Besides, you stand accused too and cannot champion her in this. Will you trust me?”
I stared hard at him “With my own life, yes. With Yseult’s…” It wasn’t betrayal I feared, but failure. “I will not see her burn.”
“Nor will I,” he vowed. “But if I fail first in this, we may champion her still.”
Double the chance of saving her. I calmed. Between now and Monday morn, as I’d heard the king announce before I could hear no more, Yseult would not be harmed. And right now impetuous rage would get us nowhere. “What do you have in mind?”
He quirked a half-smile at me. “A miracle.”
~ ~ ~
We slipped into the stables well before dawn, before any cry had yet been raised. Neither Fallax nor Calannog was particularly happy to see us at that hour, both snorting their displeasure as we saddled them.
I felt the coward abandoning Yseult, knowing the agony the next few days would bring, she knowing we would be working to save her, but not knowing if—how—we could succeed.
I was still unclear on that last myself.
But Des’ confidence was contagious. Wholly, if grudgingly, I trusted to his secret plan, while testing the edge of my borrowed sword and lamenting the loss of my own sword and bow and harp, all of which hung in my chamber in Tintagel.
Because if Des’ plan failed, I would fight all of Cornwall, Briton and Wales before I would see Yseult die.
I followed Des along the sea cliffs of Morois Wood, riding as the sun rose and then for a couple of hours into the morning. In the raw light of the new day, I kept my eyes on the determined set of his shoulders, for once gladdened by the love he shared.
Mid-morning we turned our still-fresh mounts off the game trail we’d been following and entered a magnificent grotto secreted away. Further in, the mouth of a cave beckoned.
“We should be safe here,” Des said.
“We’ll keep a watch both day and night to be sure.” I wasn’t too worried. Mark would discover our horses gone soon enough, but the rocks would give up few secrets of our passing.
Once the horses were unsaddled and a fire built and sheltered, banking it for light and comfort, we settled in to wait.
Five days.
We could chase game to pass a
few hours. Hunt for crabs along the shore. Alternate cursing and praying to God for certain. But the long stretches of time still to be filled beyond that frightened me most. Already I saw Yseult in flames whenever I closed my eyes. It would only get worse.
Des left in the early evening, to set traps, I surmised—twig-covered holes to capture flushed prey—for he returned with a brace of hares. We spitted them over the fire to roast overnight and dined that evening on crabs and seaweed I’d collected.
“I’ll take first watch,” I volunteered, dead tired as I’d had no sleep the night before, but terrified of what dreams and visions awaited should I close my eyes.
“Not alone,” Des offered. He still looked fresh, powerful, and filled with alarming beauty to my tired eyes. How was it he needed so little sleep as he’d proved during the nights we’d sparred before the tourney? And why was it he knew the real reason I’d volunteered to sit the first watch? He hadn’t offered to take it for me but to sit it with me. As though he knew I couldn’t—wouldn’t—sleep.
For an hour, maybe two, we sat silent by the fire, side by side, as the crescent moon rose above. Each in our own private hell as we thought of Yseult alone and terrified, shamed and betrayed.
I wept in the dark, a sound of soul-deep anguish and guilt.
At once Des’ hand was on my shoulder. I grabbed his wrist in reflex with a grip near to snapping bones, one that would leave an ugly bruise tomorrow.
He didn’t flinch.
I knew better than to look up, to peer into those remarkable eyes, to see that angelic face with its tender smile beaming on me, offering respite and comfort to a pilgrim lost as I.
There was no drink here in the grotto but the water that bubbled pure from the spring. No alcohol to blunt the anguish, the guilt, the need. Nothing I could blame this night if I accepted Des’ unspoken invitation to take away the grief—at least for a time.
That he grieved too for Yseult was abundantly clear. In a sudden epiphany I recognized a truth I had been too stupid, to blind with my own pain to see before.
“You need this as much as me, don’t you?”
Queen's Heart: An Arthurian Paranormal Romance (Arthurian Hearts Book 2) Page 16
