Knights

by Linda Lael Miller

  With a fingertip, she traced his lips—swollen, they were, like her own, from frantic kisses. Her body was weak with satiation, but the details of Professor Steinbeth’s manuscript were clear in her mind.

  “Have you married Mariette de Troyes?” she asked without rancor or judgment. Men like Dane needed heirs, and in the thirteenth century marriage usually had more to do with expediency than love. If he had taken another woman to wife, it would not be a repudiation of what he felt for Gloriana, but simply the next logical step along a difficult path.

  “No,” he said. His gaze was steady upon hers; he did not try to avert his eyes. “But she is betrothed to me. Our vows were to be offered in a fortnight.”

  “Then I have not made you an adulterer,” Gloriana teased. Her relief was acute, and there were fresh tears in her eyes, despite her frivolous words. When next she spoke, her tone was soft and her expression serious. “Do you love her, Dane?”

  His embrace tightened slightly. “You know the answer to that, Gloriana—I care for no woman but you.” He paused, and the faintest of smiles touched his lips, just at one corner. “If it makes you feel any better, the lady bears no special fondness for me, either. She has made it plain enough that she would prefer to pass the remainder of her days in the nunnery.”

  Gloriana lifted an eyebrow. “Where you once wanted to send me,” she reminded him.

  Dane chuckled and kissed her neck. “Yes, fool that I was,” he replied. “Come, milady, and I will attend you properly, in our marriage bed. But first you need a wash.”

  She allowed him to lift her into his arms and carry her to the side of the pool, where he set her gently on the steps and began to cleanse the smudges of dirt from her face. Gloriana was embarrassed, for she had forgotten that aspect of her disguise, but soon, as he bathed other parts of her with light, splashing caresses, she forgot everything but her beloved.

  He had brought a gown for her, from one of the chests upstairs no doubt, and when they had dried themselves with bits of worn cloth, he dressed her. The mummer’s cloak and Gloriana’s modern clothes were left behind, along with the sputtering candles, as the lovers made their way through familiar passageways to the tower steps.

  Their bedchamber, when they stepped over the threshold, seemed a damp, deserted place, like the rest of the hall, and was illuminated only by the thin, eerie glow of a faltering moon. Plainly, Dane had not slept within those curved walls in a long time, though the furnishings remained as they had been, except that now the chairs and tables were draped in cobwebs and layered in dust.

  After setting their one lamp in the center of the table, Dane went to the bed, wrenched off the covers, and gave them a great shake. Gloriana watched, from her vantage point in the center of the room, devoutly hoping no mice would be found nesting in the straw mattress and at the same time knowing that nothing would keep her from sharing that thick ticking with her husband. Nothing, of course, except another abrupt shift between centuries.

  Gloriana trembled slightly at the prospect, and Dane, perceptive where she was concerned, caught the motion and turned his head to look at her.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  She looked around, somewhat nervously, before answering. “What if it has something to do with this room—my vanishing, I mean? It happened here once—”

  Dane ceased his efforts to freshen their bed and came to her, taking both her hands into his. “If you want, we shall find another chamber, or return to Hadleigh.”

  But Gloriana shook her head at that suggestion. The tower room was almost sacred to her, for it had been here that Dane had first made love to her, here that they had laughed and argued and bested each other at chess. “I wish to stay,” she replied.

  He caressed her cheek with the callused edge of one index finger. “I fear there is no safe place where we might hide from this bumbling magic of yours, milady. But whether we are together for an hour or a hundred years, let us make good use of every moment.”

  “You are very practical, my lord,” Gloriana replied, slipping her arms around his neck once more. Her smile was fragile, tentative, because she knew they could be wrenched apart at any given moment, perhaps never to see each other again. The knowledge frightened her and, at the same time, made every second precious. “We must live only for the present. But there are things that need saying.”

  Dane sighed and propped his chin lightly on the crown of her head. With his strong, swordsman’s hands, he massaged the muscles in her lower back, which were already tightening as tension, both physical and emotional, returned. He thrust out a second ragged breath before speaking.

  “Many sorrows have visited the St. Gregorys, Gloriana.” Dane drew back to look into her searching eyes. “There is no gentle way to put it—Edward has died, by my own hand. And Gareth, too, is lost, to a fever.”

  Gloriana had known of these tragedies, of course, but she did not say so, nor did she show surprise. She simply listened.

  “There can be no grace granted to a man who would kill his own brother,” Dane said, in a raspy voice. “But before God, Gloriana, I did not mean to do this deed.”

  “What happened?”

  Dane left her then, went to one of the great, open windows, and braced his foot against the low sill, gazing out toward the lake. His broad shoulders looked stiff, even in the faint light. “Edward plagued me unceasingly after you left. He thought I’d done murder and searched everywhere for some sign to prove me guilty. He lost interest in everything else but my supposed crime, and no one, including Gareth, could reason with him. Edward challenged me, again and again, and I always turned and walked in the other direction. One night, though, he sprang at me from atop a low wall—I was full of wine and so cannot be held blameless.” He paused, shoved one hand through his beautiful, unbarbered hair. “I did not guess that this was Edward until too late. I had already put my dagger through his throat, thinking him a brigand or one of my own soldiers seeking vengeance for some slight.”

  Gloriana did not wipe away her tears, was not even fully aware of them. Before, Edward’s death had been naught but a tale told in a musty old volume of history, but now it was painfully real. And so was the all-encompassing sorrow of the man who had brought it about.

  “I am so very sorry,” she said.

  Dane turned to look at her, his face and indeed most of his body hidden in shadow. Gloriana sensed his feelings, instead of reading them in his countenance or expression. “Then there was Gareth,” he said brokenly, after standing still and silent for a long time. “He fell ill with a fever, and might have recovered, but for his grief over Edward’s passing. The loss left Hadleigh weak in spirit, for the lad was more son than brother to him.”

  Gloriana nodded. The terrible task was not yet finished; Dane must still speak of Elaina, for his own sake if no one else’s.

  “Elaina lives, but barely,” he told Gloriana.

  “She has long been ill, Dane.”

  “Yes,” he agreed hoarsely. “But now she utters not a single word from one sunrise to the next. She would die, if the nuns did not spoon broth and gruel into her mouth and force her to swallow. She sees nothing, and yet never closes her eyes.”

  Gloriana swallowed, full of sorrow. Elaina had been a good friend to her, Gareth a wise and generous guardian, Edward the dearest companion of her youth. “The fault is not yours alone,” she said softly, grievously, “but mine also. If I had not gone—”

  He was before her again in an instant, his hands grasping her shoulders. “It was a mishap, your going from here—you cannot be blamed.”

  Gloriana touched his face. “Nor can you,” she reasoned quietly. “Edward would not have rested until he’d goaded you into some sort of fight; surely you understood him well enough to know that. And if Gareth chose not to prevail over the fever, he alone is accountable.”

  Dane let his forehead rest against Gloriana’s, and a great shudder of despair went through his body. “Hold me close to you,” he whispered, putting his arms a
round her. “Cause me to forget, for the space of one night at least, all the burdens that are mine to bear.”

  She wanted to weep for Kenbrook, for in his way he, too, had been among the lost, along with Gareth and her poor, sweet, foolish Edward. But now he was found, and in her arms, where she would give him solace.

  Gloriana took Dane’s hand and led him in silence to their bed, long abandoned and smelling faintly of mildew. She spread the coverlet over the mattress, then turned back to her husband and began raising his tunic over his head. After that, she took his breeches away, then slipped the soft leather boots from his feet and, kneeling before him on the cold floor, rolled his leggings down.

  When he stood before her, naked and magnificent, she did not rise, but brushed the hard musculature of his thighs with her lips.

  Dane trembled, utterly vulnerable, completely hers. His manhood towered against his hard belly, in a sort of arrogant surrender, and when Gloriana closed a hand around it, he gasped and murmured some exclamation.

  She brought him to her mouth, nibbled at him, and teased him with a few light flicks of her tongue, wringing a long, low moan from his throat. This was his punishment for withholding himself earlier, in the Roman bath, however briefly he had done so.

  Despite the chill of the evening air, Dane broke out in a sweat. His skin, everywhere that Gloriana touched him with a free and roving hand, was slick with moisture. While she enjoyed him, he began to rock slightly on his heels in an effort to be taken more thoroughly. But when she took him full in her mouth and suckled hard, it was only to add to his torment, for the instant before Dane would have been satisfied, she always drew back.

  He endured the game as long as he could, but finally raised her by her upper arms and gently pressed her backward onto the bed. The straw within the mattress rustled as Dane pushed Gloriana’s gown up and braced her heels against the broad frame. He knelt, and she shivered as he parted her knees, his hands gliding slowly, slowly, over the flesh of her inner thighs.

  “Now, milady wench,” he said, and she felt his breath against the warm, moist nest of curls that sheltered the nubbin of flesh he meant to feast upon, “I shall have recompense for what I have just endured.”

  Gloriana groaned and arched her back, offering herself to him. When it came to Dane, and the pleasures he gave her, she was utterly without inhibition or shame.

  He laughed, putting the pad of his thumb to the place that wanted his tongue and making slow circles. “It is only the beginning, wife. I will have you wailing and thrashing upon this bed when the sun rises, and long after.”

  Gloriana was bucking under his words and caresses by then. She dragged her kirtle the rest of the way off, over her head, and lay bare in the moonlight, a tigress, flexed and eager for the attentions of her mate.

  He tongued her in one long, lapping stroke, and she uttered a lusty shout, setting her heels into his shoulders and raising herself to him, a chalice of flesh.

  Dane chuckled, the sound reverberating through her from her most sensitive center, and caused her to cry out again, this time in furious frustration, with the lightest, swiftest of nibbles.

  He raised his head from her, and over her own soft whimpering, she heard his amusement. “What is this? Does the morsel tell the mouth how to savor it?”

  A deep shudder moved through Gloriana, culminating in a sob of passion. “I must have you,” she pleaded. “Pray, do not tease me anymore—”

  Dane drew on her in one long, mind-splintering pull of his lips. “I have heard your petition, milady,” he said, when she lay trembling on the mattress, every inch of her flesh shimmering with perspiration, every nerve screaming for satisfaction, “but I must deny it for now. I am enjoying you too much, you see, to stop. And I have not forgotten, alas, how you brought me to the brink of ecstasy in these minutes just past, but granted no quarter.”

  Gloriana began to toss her head from side to side on the ticking. Her hands clawed the coverlet and every muscle in her thighs and belly quivered as she awaited his attentions.

  He allowed her no shred of mercy in the hours of frenzied delight that followed, and she sought none. At dawn, they slept, limbs entangled, too exhausted to move or even to dream, and awakened when the sun was past its zenith.

  Dane, as ever, was the first to rise. During the night, some faithful servant—no doubt instructed ahead of time by the master of Kenbrook Hall—had brought a large ewer of water and a basket of food. There was cheese inside, a cold joint of venison, and two small fowls, crisply roasted.

  The succulent scents roused Gloriana, at least partially, from a floating daze of contentment, and she lifted herself on her elbows. “I’m starved,” she said.

  Dane laughed. “Considering your exertions of the night just past, madame,” he said, “that is not surprising.” He brought the basket to the bed and they sat facing each other, naked and cross-legged, in the middle of the mattress, to partake of their meal.

  Gloriana made a wry face at his comment, but withheld a reply until she’d consumed the better part of a guinea hen. Then, because the chamber was chilly, she donned the kirtle she had discarded the night before.

  “I am quite certain,” she said, when she was seated again, and gesticulating with a drumstick, “that it is not good manners for a gentleman to offer comment on the degree of a lady’s passion.”

  Dane chuckled. “Were I a gentleman rather than a brigand, or you a lady, rather than a lovely and spirited wench, civilities might be a consideration.” He took a bit of cheese from the basket and nibbled at it in a way that heated Gloriana’s blood. “I would not have you otherwise.”

  Gloriana felt color in her cheeks and, indeed, in the rest of her body. She was glad she had put on her kirtle. “Nor would I change you, my lord,” she said in a tone of unwillingness. “But now we must speak of serious matters.”

  Dane arched an eyebrow. He had put on his breeches, but had not bothered with a tunic or leggings. “What matters are these? I have told you of Edward’s death, and of Gareth’s—”

  Gloriana suppressed an urge to touch her husband, lest they end up making love again and accomplish nothing else. “We will mourn them together,” she said quietly, blinking back tears. “I would tell you what I know of the future.” She touched her abdomen with one hand, lightly, in an unconscious caress. “While but a few weeks passed where I was, in the latter part of the 1990s, two years have gone by here, in your world.”

  He said nothing, but simply watched her and waited.

  She prayed he would understand what that time difference meant in terms of her pregnancy—had she stayed in the thirteenth century, she would have borne the child more than a year before. “We conceived a babe, you and I,” she said.

  Dane nodded. “I know,” he answered.

  Gloriana put down the drumstick, her appetite gone. “It is all so confusing—so impossible—”

  He took her hand, running the rough pad of his thumb gently over her knuckles. “Yes,” he agreed. “What are you getting at, Gloriana?”

  “The babe,” she said miserably. “I couldn’t bear it if you thought I’d deceived you.”

  Dane smiled. “There is no comprehending what has happened to us, but this much I know—the heart beating beneath that lovely breast is a true one, and pure. I do not think, sweet Gloriana, that you can lie, nay, not even when it would be the most prudent course.”

  She curved her fingers around his and squeezed tightly. “But I must live all my life in secret, my lord—have you forgotten that I am called the Kenbrook Witch? Do you not see that I will be hanged, or burned, if the servants and villagers learn that I have come back?” She looked down at the food basket, now empty but for scraps and crumbs, and felt herself go pale. “I do not want to die,” she finished.

  Dane pushed aside the obstacle between them, sending the basket tumbling to the floor, and, kneeling, drew her into his arms. “Before all the saints, Gloriana,” he whispered hoarsely, into her hair, “before the Holy Virgin
, the Christ, and Jehovah Himself, I will allow no man or woman to do you harm!”

  She clung to him, resting her cheek against his bare shoulder. The muscles beneath that smooth, warm flesh were hard and unyielding, and yet she could have asked for no better pillow. “You cannot fight the whole of Christendom,” she answered. “You are but one man, though the finest and strongest anywhere, and they are many.”

  He cupped her face in his hands and thrust her head back a little way that he might look into her eyes. “We will say you were kidnapped and returned to us in secret, after a great ransom was paid. Maxen will help to spread the tale.”

  “But Judith saw—”

  “The handmaid’s grief at your passing was nearly as terrible as my own. She can be made to swear that you were dragged away by outlaws and that her fear was so great that only now does she recall what really happened.”

  Gloriana was eager to believe Dane’s plan would work, although it seemed far-fetched. On the other hand, these were simple people, and if the tale was well and colorfully told, they might accept it. Surely an abduction by bandits was easier to credit than the idea of a flesh and blood woman melting into nothingness like steam from a kettle!

  “Bring Judith to me,” she said, after a long moment. “Friar Cradoc, too, and Eigg. We will try your scheme, Kenbrook, but you must make me a promise first.”

  “Anything,” Dane agreed, smoothing her lovetangled hair back from her face with one hand.

  “Do not be so quick to pledge yourself, my lord,” Gloriana warned, in all seriousness. “You have not heard my petition.” She paused and drew a deep, tremulous breath, then let it out slowly. “If fate goes against us, and I am accused of witchery, you must swear, for my sake and that of our unborn child, to send an arrow through my heart before they burn me.”

  Dane went gray as a corpse at this injunction. “I pray it will not come to that,” he said, holding her hands now, so tightly that they ached. “But you have my word, Gloriana—you will die mercifully, by my hand, but you shall never feel the flames.”