Protected by the Knight's Proposal

by Meriel Fuller

  Without warning, she took off, diving down the spiral staircase, down, down, as quick as her feet would take her, until she reached the narrow door at the bottom, the door to the storerooms beneath the castle.

  ‘No, stop!’ His loud voice roared down the stairwell after her.

  He tore down after her, his steps thumping heavily on the stone, and she wrenched open the door. Vanished into the darkness. She had to hide from him, hide away until he had gone. If he was connected in some way to Simon of Doccombe, then the chance that he could unwittingly reveal their whole deception was a definite possibility.

  ‘Come back!’ he yelled. ‘I only want to ask you a few questions!’

  Panic bubbled in her stomach, a frothy, whirling tide of desolation. The strength sapped from her legs, debilitating; the resulting weakness making her steps jerky, haphazard. There was no bolt on the inside of the door and she had no light. But she knew her way around this catacomb of chambers, a vast labyrinth of linked vaulted rooms created to house the castle stores. And the man on the stairs did not.

  Threading her way around a stack of barrels containing salted meat for the winter, she clambered nimbly over a pile of grain sacks. Her wide skirts tangled around her legs and she kicked the hem down angrily; the bulky cloth hampered her. Her breath expelled in quick, truncated gasps. Behind the sacks was an opening in the wall, low down, and she crawled through the tiny space into the next chamber, stacked high with more grain sacks. Once through, she allowed the breath to leave her lungs, a deep sigh. There was no way such a big man would be able to crawl through such tight space; she was safe, for now, at least. She would hide at the far end, behind the heap of sacks, and crouch down in the darkness until he became bored with searching and left.

  * * *

  Lachlan stared, slack-jawed, as the maid twisted away. What kind of fool did she take him for? Did she not realise that by trying to avoid him, she simply made him more suspicious? This maid, with her dew-soft cheeks and luminous green eyes, had something to hide. And he owed it to Simon to find out what it was.

  He jumped down the shallow steps after her, five at a time. Kicked open the thin-planked door that she had so recently closed. He stood, listening, hearing the hurried patter of the maid’s feet, the nervous bustle of skirts as she fled into the darkness. Excitement gripped his loins, crazy, haphazard. His mouth twisted ruefully. If truth be told, he was not pursuing her solely for Simon’s sake. For the first time, in a long time, he felt alive.

  She crashed against something, a wooden crate maybe, then cursed. Lachlan smiled, a slow easy smile. He plunged forward, weaving around the barrels, squeezing with difficulty through a low crawl space into the next chamber, his shoulder scraping the wall above him. Granules of stone dust flecked his tunic. He saw her then, in a gratifying flash of stocking-covered legs, climbing determinedly up a heap of grain sacks, a huge pile that rose almost to the vaulted ceiling. Lachlan sprang forward, stretching out his body to full length, reaching out to grab her.

  ‘Come here, you little wretch!’ he yelled triumphantly. His blunt fingers rasped against her delicate stocking, pinioning her slender shin, below the knee. She screamed in outrage, annoyance, kicking her leg upwards in a determined effort to break free. He grabbed her other leg, reaching up to seize the embroidered girdle at her waist, muscular fingers digging into her back. He hauled her down roughly. A mass of fabric billowed out over his face and shoulders, enveloping him in a delicious scent, lavender mingled with the enticing smell of her skin. Her perfume.

  His senses shuddered, rippling with fierce awareness. The rigid clamp on his emotions, held tight for so long, cracked open for a tiny moment. The heat of her leg seared his calloused palm, the rough pads of his fingers rasped against her fine woollen stockings. Her warm sensuality, so close, burned through him, melting the solid lump of his heart. He had forgotten. Forgotten what it was like to be so close to a woman. His belly quivered, innards turning to liquid fire.

  ‘Let go of me, you oaf!’ Cecily screeched at him, her voice muffled by the grain sacks. ‘You have no right to treat me like this!’ Kicking backwards with her heels, she struggled in his fearsome grasp, wriggling her hips to try and break free. Face pressed into the grain sacks, the tangy smell of wheat rose in her nostrils. Hot tears of anger, of frustration, seeped from her eyes. Defeat washed over her, the dull tide of humiliation. The man pressed against her, shoving her against the sacks, holding her there, his chest a slab of iron against her back and shoulders. His heavy legs ground into her hips and thighs, an intimate cradle.

  Her brain leaped with startled awareness.

  Sensation whipped through her, a scythe of blinding light. A visceral stabbing. Exhilaration flooded her veins, dancing flames of intense delight. She had never experienced anything like it. Her wedding night had been a rough, shameful affair. Peter had been drunk, barely lucid, and their coupling had been hurried, painful. She remembered Peter’s foetid breath, the stench of his sweat as he collapsed upon her afterwards. Her blood, staining the white sheet, displayed in the great hall for all to see, the morning after. Evidence of their consummation.

  The corrosive memory drove her into action. ‘Get off me now!’ Cecily jammed her elbow back into the man’s ribs. The pressure of his heavy body released, allowing her to turn. It was a mistake. Braced over her, the man’s arms imprisoned her upper body, his legs encasing the slender curve of her hips. His chin brushed the top of her head, inadvertently. Her mouth was inches below his.

  Cecily dragged her gaze downwards, forcing herself to focus on his chest. The buckle on the leather strap that crossed his tunic, glinting dully. The row of neat stitching that held his sleeve to the body of his tunic. He smelled of soil and sunshine, rich earthy scents that spoke of a quiet powerful energy, waiting to be unleashed. A wild animal pacing silently around a cage. Her senses reeled. For one single, insane moment, she yearned to lift her arms around him, to pull him closer. To claim his lips in a kiss.

  The air between them slowed, filled with a thickening expectancy.

  The sensual lines of her body pillowed against Lachlan’s hard limbs. Her hips, the soft flesh of her thighs, sealed against his own. Logic told him to move, to lift himself away. But his brain seemed incapable of sending that instruction to his muscles. He hung above her, arms locked straight, tracing the delicate curve of her mouth, the parted lips. Her eyes sparkled with a strange intensity. A longing. Need.

  Desire, buried deep in a choked-up well of self-restraint, burst forth. Blood pumped, obscuring conscious thought, blurring the lines between what was right and what was wrong. Reason fled, chased by a torrent of longing. Lachlan collapsed against her, his mouth claiming hers in the darkness, seizing her lips in a long, hard kiss.

  Beneath the impact of his mouth, Cecily’s arms lifted, a distracted protest, then dropped again, palms falling open like delicate flowers against the hessian sacks. Any resistance fell away, vanished. His mouth was fierce, relentless against her sensitive flesh, roaming her lips with delicious exploration, bombarding her with wave after wave of sweet, rolling emotion. Her heart rate whipped along, a dangerous, heady beat, pooling her belly to liquid. Building steadily. Yet she had not the slightest inkling of where she was headed. Unknown territory.

  Then, as quickly as the kiss had begun, Lachlan ripped his mouth away, standing up abruptly. His eyes shed sparks of fire. He stepped back, jerkily, his mind scrabbling with the impact of what he had done. God in Heaven, he had chased and assaulted a woman in her own home! Had he truly lost his wits, out there on the battlefields of France? This was no way to treat a woman.

  ‘That should not have happened,’ he mumbled thickly.

  ‘No, it should not have.’ Cecily’s voice shook from his kiss, from the sheer, heated intensity. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself! How dare you attack me like this!’ And yet she had welcomed the touch of his mouth like a lover. What had she been thinkin
g?

  Shame washed over her, a hot churning tide of humiliation. Cecily scrambled to her feet, adjusting her clothes, snapping down her skirts, smoothing her hands over her bodice. Her linen headscarf had become dislodged, revealing the brown silk of her hair, gleaming in the shadows. Angrily, she rewound the cloth around her face and neck. Mouth burning, she shoved past him, head held high, marching back.

  Lachlan lifted his head as she bustled past him, his eyes, vivid blue, blazing over her. ‘I am sorry.’ But he was not sorry. Not really. His body hummed with the power of their kiss, shimmering with new-born intensity. The intense contact with this woman had jolted him, driving hard through the armour plating around his heart. After years and years of cold, icy numbness, the taut strings around his chest, his ribcage, loosened fractionally. Lachlan turned to follow her, this maid whose name he did not know, his heart dancing with a sparkling energy.

  At the bottom of the spiral staircase, Cecily grabbed the rope banister that spiralled upwards. The rough fibre grazed her palm. The man’s big body crowded into the space after her, intimidating, overpowering. She thought of her mother, fretting upstairs, pacing across Isabella’s chamber. Cursing her.

  ‘I am needed elsewhere.’ Cecily placed one foot on the bottom step, fighting to keep the betraying wobble from her voice. ‘And I think you need to leave. The main entrance is through the great hall.’ She lifted one arm and pointed. ‘That way.’

  ‘I will go...if you tell me your name.’ In the gloom of the hallway, his hair glinted, whips of flame. He leaned against the wooden frame of the cellar door, folding his huge arms across his chest. Annoyingly, he seemed in no hurry to leave.

  She chewed fractiously at her fingernail, annoyed by his lack of action. ‘Sweet Jesu, why do you plague me so? Haven’t you done enough?’ Lacing her arms across her chest, Cecily tried to slow the race of her heart, the devastating legacy of his kiss. Her lips smarted. Burned.

  I haven’t even started yet. The thought snatched at him, unbidden. He stared at her mouth, reddened by his kiss. His belly tightened with quick awareness.

  She tilted her chin up, green eyes darkening, flicking sparks of anger towards him. ‘You barge in here without so much as a by your leave, attack me with your questions, intimidate me and then you...then you...’ Her speech trailed away, floundered.

  ‘And then I kissed you.’ His voice hitched with unspent desire.

  Cecily picked at the coarse rope of the banister. ‘God only knows what you’re going to do next!’ she muttered, without thinking.

  ‘Nothing is going to happen next.’ His eyes twinkled over her, deep pools of iridescent blue. ‘You flatter yourself, dear lady. I might not have any manners, but credit me with some self-control, at least.’

  Christ! What was he talking about? Cecily clapped her hands to her flaming cheeks, an image of the two of them rolling together on the grain sacks. ‘I didn’t mean that! You know I didn’t!’ Was he deliberately seeking to provoke her? ‘I mean that you...’ She shook her head. What harm was there in asking him outright? ‘Did Simon of Doccombe send you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She had known, she supposed, yet the terseness of his reply stabbed into her chest. Her hand clutched the banister like a lifeline, her fingers clenching and unclenching, forcing herself to remain calm.

  ‘What does he want?’

  ‘He wants to see Lady Cecily. And the baby.’

  And all of a sudden, she saw her way out, a way to make him leave. Lifting her eyes, she traced the lean line of his jaw, a faint glinting shadow of beard dusting his skin. The coarse stone of the wall, dull grey, framed the fiery springiness of his hair.

  ‘He can.’ Cecily’s mind sprang through the possibilities. ‘Tell him to come on the six o’clock bell, this evening. That will give my lady a few hours to recover before she is able to receive visitors.’ Her sharp gaze drifted across his face, the defined angles of his cheekbones, hollowed out with shadow beneath, his jaw, a square-cut slashing line. But this man could not come again, not if he was a knight of Simon of Doccombe. For then he would see her, with the baby, and uncover the whole deception. ‘And only him, mind,’ Cecily said hurriedly. ‘Only Lord Simon. No one else. She doesn’t want a room full of men.’

  ‘Who would?’ Lachlan threw her a taut smile.

  She flushed. ‘As long as that’s clear.’ Her tone was over-bright, bossy. ‘The six o’clock bell, this evening.’

  Cecily had climbed two steps, when the man gripped her arm. ‘And who should I say told me? Lord Simon is bound to ask.’ A heady feeling slid up her arm, to her shoulder, heat splaying out through her bones, her muscles.

  ‘I... I’m a companion to Lady Cecily,’ she supplied hurriedly. ‘A cousin.’

  ‘That was some risk you took this morning. What was so important that you had to cross the river when the water was so high?’

  ‘I was fetching the midwife for Lady Cecily. I needed to find her and fast.’

  ‘So you thought you’d take a shortcut. A dangerous one.’

  She remembered the blood on the sheets, the helpless panic in her sister’s eyes. Who wouldn’t take such a risk for their own family? She nodded. ‘It took longer in the end...because of what happened. But all is well.’ She moved up a step and his arm fell to his side.

  ‘You were lucky,’ Lachlan said. His eyes slid across her slender frame, the svelte lines encased in the blue woollen gown, before he nodded sharply in farewell.

  Cecily slumped against the cold stone wall, listening to the sound of the man’s footsteps fade away along the corridor. Sweat ran down from her armpits, trickling down the inside of her gown. She had been lucky. Up to now, anyway.

  Chapter Five

  ‘Where have you been?’ her mother rapped out, moving rapidly around the bed, her thin mouth contorting in vague disgust. ‘What happened to you?’

  Cecily lifted the wooden plank across the door, settling the ends into the iron brackets either side, preventing any access from the corridor. She traced the knots and whorls in the wood of the door, desperate to rest her head against those cool planks, unwilling to turn and face the critical stare of her mother, her constant questions delivered in a high-pitched needling whine.

  What had happened down there, down in the cellars? Her mind stuttered, bereft of thought. Her body thrummed from the stranger’s kiss, as if his physicality, the solidity of his energy, had stuck to her body, leaving an impression she was unable to scrub out. ‘I’m not sure...’ Her voice was muted as she turned to face Marion.

  ‘What do you mean?’ With a swift flick of her head, her mother glanced towards the sleeping Isabella, to make sure the sharpness of her voice hadn’t woken her. The baby snuffled beside her sister, wrapped tightly in a woollen blanket, the perfect skin of his brand-new face glowing with pristine freshness in the sunlit room. ‘You didn’t meet anyone, did you?’ Her mother’s claw-like fingers wrapped around a carved bedpost. Beneath the slack blue-white skin of her hands, her knuckles were visible, white bone.

  ‘Yes.’ Her voice wavered. Bright blue eyes pierced her conscience.

  Her mother staggered a little, gripping the post for support. ‘Who?’

  ‘I’ve never met him before.’ The lie dropped easily from Cecily’s lips. She picked at a tight knot in her girdle. She couldn’t even begin to explain what had happened down by the river. ‘But...but he said he had been sent by Lord Simon...’

  ‘Christ in Heaven! How did he manage to get past the guards?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  Marion sat down, abruptly, the strength leaving her bones. She lifted a shaking hand to her pale temple. ‘This is what comes of you flouncing off in a temper, Cecily.’ The straw in the mattress rustled beneath her slight weight, the bed fur gathering into plush ripples.

  ‘That man that I met...he could reveal our whole deception.’ A sense of entrapm
ent, a hostile snaring, wound itself around her, slowly tightening. ‘Mother...maybe...maybe we should stop this now. Tell Lord Simon the truth.’

  ‘Are you completely insane?’ Marion’s pale eyes rounded on her. ‘Everything is going in our favour. Isabella has given birth to a boy. We are so very nearly there. Don’t you dare say anything.’ Marion tipped her head to one side, listening. Footsteps were coming up the stairs, fast.

  ‘Mistress...my lady!’ It was Martha, calling to Cecily through the barred door. Gasps punctuated her frantic speech; she had run up the steps. ‘It’s him, it’s Lord Simon! He’s at the main gates with his men, wanting to see you! He knows about the baby. He’s...he’s threatening to break the door down!

  Cecily’s heart plummeted; she stared wildly at her mother, her mind clouding with despair. ‘But Lord Simon was supposed to come later. On the six o’clock bell!’ Had that wretched man simply ignored her instructions? ‘He will have to wait!’

  Marion shook her head. ‘We should let him in, Cecily. What difference will a few hours make? At least this way he will stop harassing us. He needs to see you in that bed, cradling that child.’ She called out to Martha, ‘Tell Lord Simon to make himself comfortable in the great hall, bring him food and something to drink. I will come down to escort him.’

  ‘Yes, my lady, thank you!’ Relief softened the girl’s voice as she turned away.

  ‘Quick!’ Marion ordered. ‘Change out of your clothes and into a nightgown!’ Her fingers grabbed at Cecily’s girdle, tugging savagely. ‘Hurry up! I wouldn’t be surprised if Lord Simon ignored Martha and came up here on his own.’