And that, she thought with satisfaction as she glided out the door, had at least taken care of the smirk.
19
Heavy mist muffled the sounds of the hunt—the lowing notes of the olifant and the baying of the hounds, the thunder of hooves on mulchy ground. The mist obscured the colors of the forest, muting the hues of gray, green, and purple. The air smelled of the earth, fecund and old.
Raine studied the averted face of the woman who rode beside him. Somehow the rest of the hunting party had ridden ahead of them, and it was the first time they had been alone together in two days. Since the afternoon in their chamber, when she had taught him the alphabet, and he had been within a heartbeat of making love to her.
The deer were fattest this time of year, but Raine also hoped to find a boar that was ruining the peasants’ crops. Those who claimed to have caught a glimpse of the beast said its hide was white. A white boar had special powers, magic powers, and only the bravest of knights could corner and kill one.
In direct defiance of his orders, Arianna had come with him, claiming she had always yearned for a sight of the legendary white boar. But Raine knew differently—she had ridden along to torment him. His little wife, with a determination that was driving him mad, had set out to seduce him.
She reined in, and Raine pulled his horse up beside her chestnut palfrey. The delicate ermine trim of her scarlet chaperon emphasized the paleness of her face. The wet had spiked her lashes and curled dark tendrils of hair around her forehead. She looked ethereal, like one of those fairy creatures of the lakes who appeared but once, gave themselves to a mortal man, and then vanished forever.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
She looked at him in silence for the longest time. Then she sank her teeth into her full lower lip. “My mount seems to be favoring his left foreleg,” she said. “I think there could be a stone caught in his hoof.”
Raine threw his leg across his horse’s withers and slid to the ground with a jingling of spurs. He lifted her out of the saddle, his hands disappearing into the thick folds of her scarlet mantle. He let her down slowly so that the front of her body slid along the length of his. This close to her, he could feel the slow rise and fall of her breasts, see the pulse that beat in her throat, faster than normal. Her nostrils flared as she sucked in a deep breath, and she pulled out of his embrace.
It was misting so heavily now that droplets could be seen swirling around them. Arianna reached up and closed her fist around air, as if trying to catch the mist in her hand. “They say when the weather’s like this, the fairies are crying.”
“Why do you think they’re weeping today?”
“I don’t know …” Her gaze roamed over his face, searching. “Perhaps they weep for us.”
Raine jammed his hands under his belt to keep from hauling her up against him. Beside them, the chestnut pawed the ground and blew a fog of warm breath out his nostrils. A pair of ravens took flight from a nearby clump of bracken, with a staccato burst of raspy caws and a flap of black wings. Arianna shuddered and pulled her mantle tight to her chest.
Raine turned to the horse, his movements stiff. It was a known medical fact that bleeding purged the body of noxious humors and diminished lust. Monks, living their celibate lives within their abbeys, had themselves bled five to six times a year for that very reason. Raine thought he would soon to have to get the castle tonsor to open a vein.
He bent over, and bracing the chestnut’s cannon bone against his thigh, began to scrape and dig the caked mud and dung out of the hoof with the point of his dagger. He glanced up at Arianna from time to time. She had gone to stand beneath the shelter of a big oak, but she watched him.
Raine let the hoof drop to the ground. He ran his hand along the horse’s leg, feeling for heat or swelling. The animal seemed to be standing square, his weight evenly distributed.
He wiped his dagger on his boot and sheathed it. As he walked up to her, he saw two bright spots of color flush across her cheeks and the pink flash of her tongue as she dampened her lips. “There wasn’t any stone,” he said.
The color on her cheeks deepened, from rose to ruby. “Oh … I guess I was mistaken, then.”
Her gaze swerved away from his. She shivered, drawing her mantle up more tightly beneath her chin. The forest was thick here—oak, birch, thickets of aspen and hedges of hawthorn. Though he couldn’t see it, Raine could hear a spring gurgling nearby. The hand that held the fold of her mantle trembled. “This is a place of strong magic,” she said.
“Is there no place in Wales that isn’t magical?” Raine said, though he, too, couldn’t help but be affected. The oak, under whose bower they sheltered, looked like a ruined gray tower, hollow and broken. Its gnarled, deformed branches dripped with mistletoe.
He felt her gaze on him, and he turned his head, meeting her eyes, eyes like the forests of her land—dark, haunted, impenetrable. She made a soft sound in her throat and Raine’s next breath came out in a hiss from between his teeth.
“Looking at you now, so tall and strong and dark …” she said, and her voice held a strange kind of awe. “I can almost believe you are the wild huntsman, Gwyn ap Lludd. God of war, hunter of men’s souls … hunter of women’s souls. Riding your demon horse across a bloodshot sky, a pack of spectral hounds flying on your heels.”
He shook his head and traced the strong line of her jaw with the tips of two fingers. “I’m only a man, Arianna. A man who—”
The bracken exploded behind him and he whirled, just as a boar hurtled into the clearing and skidded to a stop. Raine reached for Arianna, to shove her behind him. But to his horror she dashed away from him, toward the deadly beast, and then she froze. Girl and boar stared at one another, unmoving, like two bees caught in a pool of resin. Nor did Raine move, afraid he would trigger the boar into charging her. He had a spear, hanging from a sheath on his saddle, but too far away. Just as Arianna was too far away from him now. If the boar went after her and not him, he would never get to her in time.
Froth bubbled from the boar’s snout. Tusks, thick as a man’s wrist, curved out from his jaws, and the smaller grinders, the killing teeth, looked dagger-sharp. Bristles spiked along his pointed back and his eyes glowed red. His hide was white. Not the white of the mist, but of old snow, layered with soot.
The boar’s heavy head dipped and he pawed the ground. Dirt and pine needles flew up, then settled. All was silent, but for the sound of breathing—theirs, and the low snoring groans of the boar.
Slowly, Arianna’s hands moved up her throat, to the heavy gold brooch that fastened her mantle. Her face was stiff with fear. Raine eased his dagger from its sheath. He pushed the air from his lungs and tensed the muscles in his thighs. If he launched himself forward, the beast would probably turn those deadly tusks onto him and Arianna could run for the horses and safety.
“Arianna …” he began in a whisper, to warn her of his intent.
The great beast’s haunches bunched, gathering, and he charged—just as Arianna tore off her mantle and sent it sailing through the air. The scarlet cloth billowed and flapped like a flag. The boar saw it, or heard it, and he swerved at the last second, goring the mantle.
The boar’s tiny feet became tangled in the cloth, and he stumbled to his knees. It gave Raine the time he needed to spring to his horse and pull out the spear, and to throw himself in front of Arianna. He knelt, bracing the spearhead against the ground, holding it tight in his sweating hands, just as the boar staggered upright and charged again, and Arianna screamed.
The barbed iron point broke through the tough hide of the boar’s breast, piercing the heart. Incredibly, the boar kept coming. The crossbar snapped off the spear, and the shaft, driven by the force of the animal’s charge, burst out the other side, through his shoulder blade. And still the boar came….
Fetid breath blasted Raine’s face. Yellow tusks, gleaming wetly, flashed before his eyes. The boar slammed into his chest, knocking him onto his back and driving the air from his lungs. He s
aw the gray of the sky above him and then he saw nothing at all.
Soft hands fluttered over his face, like the wings of a hundred moths. “You big, stupid Norman. If you’re dead I’m going to kill you.”
Raine opened his eyes onto Arianna’s face. There was a crushing weight on his chest; he couldn’t breathe. Dizziness engulfed him and black spots danced before his eyes. “Raine, you dolt,” he heard her say, and her voice echoed at him as if coming from the bottom of a well. She covered his mouth with hers in a hard, desperate kiss. He still couldn’t breathe.
At last she let go of his mouth, and he sucked in air. His nostrils filled with the sweet, musky scent of her skin, followed by the coppery reek of blood. He pushed at the dead weight against his chest. “Help me … get it off….”
They rolled the monstrous white boar off him. He sat up, relieved to discover that nothing important had been pierced or broken. Warm, stinking blood covered the front of his jerkin, but none of it was his.
Arianna’s eyes had widened at the sight of the blood. Her mouth pursed as if she were about to scold him again, but it trembled instead. “Where are you hurt?”
He was still having trouble drawing a deep enough breath. “Not my blood,” he gasped, pulling off the soaked and reeking jerkin and flinging it behind him. He brushed the tears off her cheekbones with his thumbs. She was crying for him. His brave little wife was crying for him. “I’m all right.”
The eyes she had fastened onto his face were wet and dark. “I owe you my life, my lord.”
Raine started to smile—and then he remembered everything that had happened, and his hands closed around her upper arms. “And I owe you a damned good thrashing with my belt!” He gave her a rough shake, then hauled her up against his chest. “You ran right at that damned boar! What in God’s wounds possessed you to do such a thing?”
“I was afraid he was going to charge you.”
“You …” He pushed her away from him, then crushed her against him again. “You did a very stupid thing,” he said, but his voice had grown softer.
She threaded her fingers through the hair over his ears and snuggled into him. “I admit that it was very foolish what I did. I could have been killed.” She leaned back against the band of his arms and stared at his face, as if memorizing his features. “But I will not apologize, mark you, for I would do it again, husband. And thus, since I am not at all sorry, you have my permission to beat me.”
Groaning a laugh, he stood up, bringing her with him. The smell, the feel, of her made him slightly dizzy. His sex, which had been momentarily distracted by the danger to his life, surged full of blood again. He had to kiss her. He twisted her hair around his fist, pulling her head back, smothering her mouth with his.
The force of his kiss caused her mouth to open, and he thrust his tongue inside, slowly retreated, and thrust again. She tasted hot, of fear and hard hunger.
He let his breath trail across her lips, while he roughly massaged her breasts with the heels of his hands. His voice grew raw with need. “Damn it all, damn you … I want you, Arianna. So bad I’m dying.” She clung to him and he tilted his hips forward, rubbing his hard sex across her belly in a slow thrust and grind. “Sweet Jesus, I’m about to burst….”
Her panting breaths steamed against the tender skin of his neck. “Do it to me, Raine. Do it, do it.”
He couldn’t have not done it. He was beyond stopping himself. His lips fastened again over her hot and eager mouth. She sucked at his tongue and he gave it to her.
He began backing up, bringing her with him, his mouth still locked on hers. When he bumped against the scaly bark of the oak tree, he turned so that she was braced against the trunk. He bunched her bliaut and chainse up around her waist. His hand groped between her legs, while the other supported her weight, gripping her bottom. He rubbed his thumb along the wet, swollen lips of her sex, parted them and plunged his fingers inside. Her head fell forward onto his shoulders, and she breathed his name on a ragged groan. Her slick inner muscles closed around his fingers, and he clenched his jaw so tightly the bone throbbed. His need for her, to bury himself deep inside of her, was like a scream on his mind.
He fumbled beneath his chainse, pulling his stiff rod out through the slit in his braies. Bridging her hips with his hands, he lifted her. Her legs wrapped around his hips, gripping him—and he sheathed himself in the hot wet mouth of her sex.
She cried out, arching into him, her eyes squeezing shut, sucking him in deep, and he grunted, almost coming again, pulling back just in time. He surged upward until she accepted the full length of him, grinding against her, fitting so tightly into her, so deeply inside of her, and he was so lost, so lost, so lost, he wasn’t going to be able to stop, didn’t want to stop, ever stop, he heard his own keening breath, felt the tremors rack his muscles, thought this time, this time, this time, I will have her, all of her, she’ll be mine, mine, mine …
Every muscle in his body tightened violently and he exploded inside of her. Long and hard and deep.
She sagged against him, her body heavy. He relaxed his arms, and she slid to her feet, though she clung to his shoulders. She exhaled in a long, shuddering sigh and looked up at him.
Her eyes held a glazed, stunned look and her lips were red and wet and swollen. They quivered as she sighed again.
God, Raine, you stupid bastard, you were too rough. He smoothed back damp wisps of her hair, cupped her jaw and rubbed his thumb across her mouth. “Did I hurt you?”
She pushed out her lower lip against his thumb. “I think my bottom’s scratched.”
“Let me see.”
Before she could protest, his hand spanned her scalp and he bent her over, pulling up her bliaut. There was a faint red mark on one finely muscled cheek. He fell to his knees and pressed his lips to it.
She gasped, squirming away from him. “You, sir, are a perverted man.”
Raine knelt among the wet mulchy leaves and black earth of Wales and flashed his wife an unrepentant grin.
Laughter bubbled out of her. She tried to catch it with her hands but it spilled out, full and joyous, to be swallowed by the mist.
He stretched to his feet, reaching for her, to pull her into his arms, but she came willingly. She traced his features as if she were sightless and needed touch to know him. This time his lips met hers with a fragile tenderness.
But the kiss, that began with slow and easy sensuality, soon turned raw and hot with lust and he couldn’t bear it. He pulled away from her and walked off. He dragged in an aching breath, shocked at the effort it took to control himself. She was his wife, his pregnant wife, dammit, and she deserved better than to be taken up against a tree.
The wild white boar lay on its side in the sodden black earth. Steam rose from the hot blood where it pooled among the soggy, decaying leaves. The spear that stuck out the thick, hoary hide of its shoulder seemed much too slender and fragile to have killed it. A single eye stared sightlessly up at the canopy of leaves that dripped, wet from the mist.
“The white boar …” Arianna had come up beside him. “The tales were true, Raine. Only the bravest of knights could have killed such a beast.”
The gaze she turned on him was full of a strange, shining light. Since he’d never seen it before, it took him a moment to realize what it was. Arianna was proud of him. Never in all of Raine’s life had there ever been anyone to care enough about what he did to take pride in his accomplishments. If a dragon had come bursting out of the bracken just then he probably would have slain it, too, just to keep that shining look in Arianna’s eyes.
“He had me done for, Arianna, if it hadn’t been for you. It was a lady’s bravery that slew this particular beast.”
A self-conscious flush suffused her cheekbones, but she shook her head. “Nay, I was so scared my knees were clacking together worse than a pair of timbrels. And after the boar charged you, I just stood there screaming like a witless nit. You were the true hero.”
He reached out and pin
ched her chin between his thumb and forefinger, giving it a little shake. “You argue too much, wife.”
“Only when it is necessary to set you straight, husband.”
Arianna suggested they cut off the boar’s head and have it paraded through his fief. Raine told her not to be a witless nit. As a concession he agreed to send someone back to butcher the meat.
Arianna’s horse had taken flight during the boar’s attack, so Raine mounted her in front of him on his charger. Her mantle had been trampled and torn by the animal’s sharp little hooves and Raine’s leather jerkin was now stiff with its drying blood, so they rode through the chill mist without protection, and with his arms wrapped around her.
The saddle’s pommel was built high in front, forcing Arianna’s back up against Raine’s chest and her bottom in his lap. He scooted her forward, but as soon as he kicked the horse into a canter, she slid back onto him again. He kept pushing her forward and she kept sliding back. Her flesh seemed to mold itself into the cradle made by his spread thighs, and her breasts bounced and swayed against the forearm that he had braced across her chest.
“God’s love, woman,” he growled into her ear. “You are riding my rod instead of the horse.”
But she only laughed and squirmed harder.
As they emerged from the forest, nearing the castle, the sun began to melt the mist. Defused light bathed Rhuddlan’s sandstone walls, turning them the ruby-pink color of newly ripened strawberries.
The castle gate gaped open. Strange sounds came from inside, cackling, rustling sounds, like a field full of crows. Raine sent his charger cantering across the drawbridge and pulled up short. He slid from the saddle and Arianna followed, not waiting for his help.
“God’s death,” she exclaimed softly, turning in a slow circle.
The bailey was full of men. Hundreds of men. Red and brown and yellow heads, bald heads, coifed heads, even one tonsured head. Men in dung-colored rags and men in gem-bright silks. Men with bulging muscles and necks thick as tree trunks and thin, flitty men with rice powder caked into seamed and pitted cheeks and rouged lips. Men with faces of all humors—some round and red as August berries, others weathered, hard, tough as cured hide. Boys barely old enough to know what to do with the rod between their legs and one withered, toothless man who looked too old to remember.
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