Wounded Heroes Boxed Set

by Judith Arnold

  Perhaps he had.

  She wouldn’t say it again, she’d decided, not until she heard it from him. She knew what was in his heart; the magic that swirled around them was too powerful to be coming from her alone. He loved her. He must love her.

  Perhaps it troubled him that he was a soldier, and unlanded. Perhaps he thought he didn’t have any right to fall in love, or that it was unwise to have done so. Certainly it was unwise; no one knew that better than Joanna, and she had no easy answer as to what the future held in store for them. All she knew was that she loved him, and she couldn’t fathom that he didn’t love her back.

  He would tell her when he was ready. Pray God he did so before he left for Paris.

  He planned to leave—he and Ada le Fever—on the fifteenth of July, which was but four days hence, and had written to Lord Gui to expect them in Paris no later than the twentieth. Ada, who’d spent the past nine days recuperating at St. Bartholemew’s Hospital, was nearly recovered from the effects of the slow poisoning Elswyth had subjected her to since Christmastide. Joanna visited her every day, gratified to see her cheeks blooming with color, her eyes sparkling with renewed vitality. No longer confined to bed, she’d taken to helping the nuns nurse the other patients, an activity she seemed to find great satisfaction in. Although never keen on logic and philosophy, as her sister Phillipa was, Ada thought she might like to study medicine when she returned to Paris. Perhaps, she’d speculated, she could even talk her papa into sending her to the great medical school at Salerno, where women as well as men were educated to become physicians.

  "Joanna?" She felt Graeham’s fingers, warm and rough, on the back of her neck and closed her eyes to savor the gentle caress. "You’re very quiet suddenly. Is anything wrong?"

  "I don’t know," she said softly, but immediately amended it. "Nay. Nothing’s wrong."

  "Are you sure?"

  "It’s been a long and trying day."

  His hand stroked a comforting path down her back. "Any day that begins with the funeral of a friend is trying."

  Joanna nodded. She’d wept uncontrollably as Thomas’s shrouded body was lowered into the ground; Graeham had held her, whispering words of solace her in a voice choked with emotion.

  "He died trying to save Ada and me," she said.

  "‘Twas how he wanted to die, I think—not as a thing, eaten away with disease, but as a man, the best kind of man. He was trapped in that ruined body, but his soul is free of it now. He would want us to rejoice for him, not mourn him."

  Joanna forced herself to smile. "I know that." Scooping up a dollop of the translucent balm, she set the jar on the other side of Graeham, where she could reach it, and rubbed her hands together to warm the liniment. He sighed when she smoothed her hands down his leg from knee to ankle, and up again. "How does that feel?"

  "I could take a firmer touch."

  He’d told her that just last night, about a different kind of touch. Joanna grew warm at the memory of their uninhibited lovemaking.

  As she massaged him, she felt the taut muscles of his calf gradually relax.

  "A little higher," he said.

  Scooting back, she dipped up some more liniment and rubbed his knee, his thigh.

  Graeham lifted his shirt, untied his underdrawers, opened them; he was fully aroused. "A little higher?"

  He took her hand, slick with the oily balm, and closed it over his straining shaft. She stroked him, not needing to be told to use a firm, steady pressure. During their long, breathless nights together, she was learning the appetites of his body, just as he was learning hers.

  He whipped off his shirt, kicked off his drawers and sat up. "Where do you ache?" he asked softly, pulling at the cord that laced up the back of her kirtle.

  Suddenly short of breath, Joanna answered him with a sigh as he unlaced her. He peeled the gown off her shoulders, untied her shift and tugged both garments down to her hips as she slid her arms free. Her braids hung over her chest. He gathered them behind her, untied them and trailed his fingers through her hair until it hung in a rippling sheet down her back.

  Her heart thudded in anticipation when he reached into the little jar and scooped some of its contents onto his fingertips.

  "Where, Joanna?" he whispered into her ear, tucking himself up behind her, his legs to either side of her, their feet on the floor. "Where do you ache?"

  She gripped his thighs, waiting.

  "Tell me."

  She shook her head, thrumming with need but reticent, even after all those nights with him, to give voice to it.

  Banding an arm around her waist, he touched a balm-slicked finger to her left nipple. "Here?"

  She hitched in a breath, nodded.

  His lips grazed the back of her neck, scratchy-soft kisses, one after the other, while his hand slid warm and slippery over her weighty flesh, stroking, squeezing. He caressed her other breast the same way as she arched back against him, her breath coming faster, her breasts swelling beneath his touch.

  "Where else do you ache?"

  She whimpered, her fingers digging into his thighs.

  Dipping into the balm jar again, he rubbed his fingertips together to spread the thick ointment over them and slipped his hand beneath the garments bunched at her waist.

  Joanna held her breath.

  His first light, probing touch incited a spasm of pleasure that made her flinch. He tightened his arm around her waist to hold her still and worked the balm into her aching flesh, at first gently, almost tenderly, then pressing into her and stroking her deep, finding her wet, so wet, his sex slick and rigid against the small of her back as he held her tight for this sweet assault.

  She struggled against him, moaning, the mounting pleasure as acute as pain. "Stop," she gasped as the pleasure quivered through her, building fast, ready to spill over. She clutched at his unyielding arm, ropy with iron bands of muscle. "Stop, wait."

  "Nay," he murmured in her ear. "I want to feel you come like this." He slid his finger deep inside her, ground his palm against her.

  She shouted as her climax overtook her, hard and jolting, a shock of pleasure that crested over and over as he prolonged it with his insistent caress.

  Her ears rang as she slumped back against him. Swiftly he withdrew his hand and stripped off her kirtle and shift, leaving her in naught but her black silken stockings.

  Scooping her up in his arms, he laid her on her side, with him behind her. He wrapped one arm around her from beneath, closing it over a breast. His other hand brushed her bottom as he reached between them. She felt his fingers between her legs, opening her, and the hot, sleek pressure of him pushing into her from behind, impaling her in one stroke, both of them slick with balm and trembling with need.

  Leaning over her, he kissed her cheek, his breath harsh in her ear. "I wish I could stay," he whispered, something almost hopeless in his voice. "I wish to God I didn’t have to leave you."

  Finally she asked what she’d avoided asking for so long, hoping she wouldn’t have to, hoping he’d simply tell her. "Will...will you come back?"

  Graeham’s hand, resting on her hip, tightened fractionally. She felt his chest rise and fall against her back. "I’ll return to England in a few weeks."

  "For good?"

  Again he hesitated. "Aye."

  "Truly?" Filled with joy, she twisted her head to look at him, but he lay down and buried his face in her hair.

  "I’ll miss you," he said.

  "‘Twill only be for a few weeks, and then you’ll be back."

  He said nothing. She felt his erection wane within her.

  "I’ll miss you, too, Graeham, but we have four days together until you have to leave. We should make the best of that time." She took his free arm and draped it over her waist, guiding his hand between her legs.

  She writhed as he caressed her, swept up once more by an unstoppable tide of arousal. From within her came an insistent thickening as he swelled and filled her. He rocked into her, deep, gliding thrusts that drove
her closer, closer...

  She clawed at the bed covers as her climax neared, cried out as it overtook her. Gripping her hip, he drove in hard, his stabbing thrusts ever more urgent.

  "Oh, God, Joanna." He rolled her facedown and bucked savagely against her, one hand fisted in her hair, groaning in an almost despairing way. It seemed to Joanna that he was in the grip of something dark and desperate, an animal compulsion to mate, to claim.

  All too abruptly, he uncoupled from her. Seizing her roughly, he turned her faceup and fell on her, an anguished moan rising in his throat as his release shuddered through him.

  He shivered afterward; she held him, stroked his back, his hair.

  He raised his face to look at her; there was something haunted in his eyes. "Did I hurt you?"

  She smiled and laid her palm against his raspy cheek. "You could never hurt me, Graeham."

  Closing his eyes, he nestled his head back in the crook of her neck. "Yes, I could."

  Chapter 25

  * * *

  "ISN’T IT BEAUTIFUL here?" Joanna asked her brother as they strolled with the other wedding guests from Ramswick’s little stone chapel, where Robert and Margaret had just been married, to a clover-festooned meadow bisected by a stream, where the bride ale would be celebrated.

  "You could have been mistress of all this," Hugh said, indicating with a sweep of his hand the sprawling farmstead, green and gold and perfect beneath an afternoon sky studded with puffball clouds.

  Joanna didn’t need Hugh to remind her of that. She’d thought of little else since they’d arrived at nones for the wedding. Ramswick was her idea of heaven—sheep-dotted pastures, well-tended fields, woods and streams and a lovely little village of thatched cottages. She felt a sense of peace here. She felt at home here, much more than she did in noisome, crowded West Cheap—although, of course, she’d seen to it that Ramswick would never be her home.

  Nodding toward the bridal couple, walking hand-in-hand at the head of the procession, their heads bent together in laughter, Joanna said, "Look at them. ‘Twas always meant to be. They belong here, together."

  After a moment, Hugh said, quietly, "And I suppose you and Graeham belong together."

  Hugh had discovered the relationship one morning when he’d arrived earlier than usual for his visit, having stayed up all night throwing dice and drinking, and found Graeham coming down from the solar in his drawers. He’d accused the serjant of reneging on his promise not to compromise Joanna, and reminded him of some threat he’d once made about slicing off a certain body part and feeding it to him. No doubt he would have demanded that Graeham marry her, were it not that he’d be such an unsuitable choice for a husband. Of course, Hugh’s wrath was short-lived, as usual, evaporating in the face of Joanna’s indignant declaration that she hadn’t been compromised or taken advantage of.

  She reminded him of that now, because she sensed another of his cautionary lectures coming on. "I took a lover, Hugh. That might be sinful and it might be unwise, but I’m a grown woman, after all. I’m free to make my own mistakes."

  "That’s just it, sister," Hugh said, keeping his voice low because of all the people walking with them. "You’ve always done just exactly as you pleased, but more often than not, you’ve come to regret it. I just don’t want you to be hurt again."

  "Graeham isn’t Prewitt, Hugh."

  "Not in any obvious ways. God’s bones, I like the man. But think about it. Prewitt laid claim to you and then disappeared abroad. So has Graeham."

  "Graeham hasn’t ‘disappeared,’" Joanna said testily. "He had to take Ada le Fever back to Paris. That’s why he was sent here in the first place, to bring her home. He’s coming back in a few weeks—I told you that."

  "Aye, but you didn’t tell me why."

  "Why?"

  "He’s returning to England for good, he said. Did he tell you why? Is Lord Gui releasing him from his service? Will he attach himself to a new overlord? Will he sell his services overseas, as I do?"

  "Nay—I’m sure he wouldn’t do that." Joanna couldn’t live with that. It was bad enough having a beloved brother who was away so much, risking his life on foreign soil for other people’s kings; she couldn’t bear it if Graeham became a mercenary, too.

  "Why is he coming back, Joanna? For you? Does he have any way of making a—"

  "I don’t know, damn you!" A few heads turned; Joanna studied the grass beneath her feet as she walked, heat rising in her cheeks.

  Three weeks had passed since Graeham had escorted Ada across the Channel; it had seemed like three years. She missed him desperately. She needed to see him, to hold him in her arms, to whisper her thrilling new secret in his ear.

  "What did Graeham mean by ‘a few weeks’?" Hugh persisted. "Four? Five? Six?"

  "I don’t know." Christ, but she wished she did. Please, Graeham, come back to me—soon. "Hugh, I really don’t want to talk about this."

  He curved an arm around her shoulder. "I know, but I have a responsibility to help you see reason about things. I’m the only family you’ve got anymore."

  Too true. Lord William of Wexford, their sire, had been invited to this wedding, as had most of the local nobility, but he’d declined when he found out Joanna would be there. He had excised her from his world; she had no father. All she had was Hugh.

  And now Graeham.

  "How can it possibly work out, you and Graeham?" Hugh asked.

  "Somehow it will." It had to. Joanna’s hand strayed to her woozy stomach. Up ahead, she saw the meadow that was the site of the wedding feast, set up with linen-draped trestle tables beneath fluttering white canopies; servants bustled about, laying white-bread trenchers on the tables. A bit of bread usually quelled her morning queasiness; she’d nibble on her trencher.

  "I blame myself for bringing him to your house that day," Hugh said.

  "So you’ve told me numerous times. As for me, I’m very grateful to you for bringing Graeham Fox into my life." Pausing in her walking, she kissed her brother on his clean-shaven cheek. "Thank you."

  "You won’t thank me if he breaks your heart."

  "He’s not going to break my heart."

  "Has he told you he loves you?"

  "I told you—I don’t want to talk about this."

  "Ah," Hugh said sadly. "I thought as much."

  "I know he loves me. I just don’t want to talk about it."

  Girlish shrieks advanced from behind, growing louder as Catherine and Alice ran past, holding hands and giggling excitedly. Joanna wouldn’t have recognized Alice. No longer was she the scrappy little waif condemned to fending for herself on the streets of London. She was the ward of Lord Robert of Ramswick, and by God, she looked the part, in a fine white silken tunic and a chaplet of daisies adorning her long golden hair.

  "Good day, mistress!" Alice called out as she raced past with her new little sister. "Good day, Sir Hugh."

  Joanna and Hugh returned the greeting, but the girls were too far away by then to hear them.

  "Alice is thriving here," Joanna observed.

  "You’d thrive if you lived in a place like this, too."

  "I suppose I would." Joanna knew she would. She longed for the quiet and serenity of the country. Every night, as she drifted off to sleep, she fancied she was in some lovely little cottage somewhere far away from the tiresome turmoil of London. In her imaginings, of course, Graeham was with her; she was his wife.

  At the edge of the canopied enclosure, Hugh took her by the shoulders and gave her his gravest big-brother look. "You should sell your house and buy one out in the country."

  "Don’t you think I’ve thought of that? It won’t work. I might make enough from selling that house to buy a new one, but I couldn’t afford any land to go with it. I don’t want some little village house all crowded in with a dozen others. I’d need some land to call my own, otherwise it wouldn’t be worth it."

  "Then let me give you some money, enough for a few acres and to help support you if you have trouble selling yo
ur embroidery."

  "Hugh, you know I can’t let you do that."

  "Why not? Are you expecting Graeham Fox to come back and marry you and take you away from the city?"

  "Nay..." Not precisely.

  "Hoping?"

  Aye, desperately. "It’s because of what you did for me six years ago, Hugh. You bought me the house in West Cheap. You know I promised myself I’d never take your charity again."

  "‘Tisn’t charity. I’m your brother, for pity’s sake. I have a right to try and look after you."

  "I don’t need looking after." And who knew what would come to pass after Graeham returned to her? She must wait for him before making any plans to leave London.

  As if he’d read her mind, Hugh said, "Whether you’re married to Graeham or not, you’ll need a home. It’s unlikely he’ll be able to provide for you."

  "Hugh, stop it," she said, dismayed that what he said was probably true, and appalled to find the situation all too reminiscent of her marriage to Prewitt, when Hugh had had to give her the home her husband couldn’t. Wresting out of his grip, she said, "I’m here to celebrate a marriage and enjoy myself. I’m not going to talk to you about Graeham anymore."

  She did enjoy herself, after she’d picked apart enough of her trencher to settle her stomach. The day was mild, the food delicious, and the music —provided by a harpist who made her think of Thomas—exceptionally beautiful. Robert and Margaret, sitting with the girls and their parents at the high table, were as adoring as love-struck adolescents.

  In addition to the neighboring noblemen and their wives, every important Londoner had turned out for the wedding. The king’s justiciar and his wife were there, along with both sheriffs and the two barons, Gilbert de Montfichet and his cousin Walter fitz Robert fitz Richard.

  Joanna had exchanged cursory greetings with Lord Gilbert and Lady Fayette in the chapel before the nuptial Mass, feeling decidedly awkward; after all, six years ago she’d rejected their son for a silk merchant. Nevertheless, they seemed remarkably gracious, especially Lady Fayette, who took her hands and told her how much she’d missed her over the years.