Lord of My Heart

by Jo Beverley

  “In good time.” His hand moved at last, moved to simply cover an aching breast, bringing more torment than relief. “I fear I’ve taught you to be impatient, love. Time to learn a different lesson.”

  “What lesson is that?” The third bellow of the horn meant everyone would be in the hall. They were truly alone.

  “The delights of postponing delight. Do you remember what I said to you by the river?”

  She moved against his hand. “I remember what you said you said.”

  “I said I was going to tease your nipples to aching, then suck them soft, suck them hard until you were wild for me.” Again her body moved of its own will, begging for what it was promised.

  Madeleine could not move her hands, but she pressed back against him and wriggled. She heard him catch his breath.

  “I told you how hot and moist you were for me,” he said hoarsely. “How much more so you would be when I touched you there. How I’d make you ache, and take your ache and turn it into fire. I’m going to love you slowly, my wife, very, very slowly, then when you can’t stand it anymore, I’ll take you hard and fast.”

  Her body burned for him. She ached already. “I can’t stand it anymore,” she whispered.

  He chuckled. “You have a lot to learn.”

  He carried her to their room, unwound the cloak, then sat her firmly on the bed. Madeleine watched dazedly as he undressed himself. Finally he stood naked before her in full desire, all gold. Gold skin, gold hair, gold bands on strong arms. Her beautiful river god. Her faery prince.

  He wore armbands, and a bracelet on his left wrist, but none on his right. Because of the wound, or because it was no longer necessary?

  She touched gently near the blistered circle on the back of his right hand. “Hereward saved you with this.”

  “And doubtless knew it.”

  Madeleine thought of the magic that wove through this land. Was it part of the magic that was weaving through her now? She rose and ran a hand up a muscled arm, across his chest, and down the other. It was as if his flesh sang beneath her fingers. Was this how she felt to him?

  She moved to undress, but he swung her against him again, her back to him. “Now I’m naked,” he said softly. She knew it. His erection was hard against her back. Her heart was thundering. Her legs shook. How much more of this could she endure?

  He put his hands over her breasts and rubbed them with the most tender touch, so she could scarcely feel it through three layers of cloth. It was as if fire surged through her veins. “Sweet heavens,” she gasped.

  “Sweet heavens indeed,” he whispered as one hand slid down to press at the juncture of her thighs. She whimpered. He worked up her skirt until his hand could slide between her thighs. Her head fell back, then forward. A shudder took her, and only his strong arm held her up.

  Gently he turned her, put her hands on his shoulders, and undid her girdle. Madeleine regained some of her wits and was able to cooperate as he stripped off her clothes in one layer, until she, too, was dressed only in her jewels—the heavy gold collar and the two bracelets.

  His eyes traveled over every inch of her and adored her without words. Responding to that message, Madeleine spread her arms and turned before him, flashing him a triumphant smile. He laughed and captured her, lowered his head to lick first one nipple then the other until a shuddering wave passed through her. But that was all.

  He began to unravel her plaits.

  Playfully desperate, she reached for his erect shaft. He laughed, dodged, and in a moment she found her wrists bound with her silk scarf. “Aimery!”

  “Just to keep you out of mischief for a moment,” he said, and continued his work until her hair was a rich curtain around her. He rubbed one long strand over her right nipple and smiled. “I’ll untie you, but if you touch me, I’ll spill my seed. Then you’ll have to wait even longer.”

  “Keep me tied then,” she said, pressing forward. “But do it. I’m wild for you. Truly I am!”

  “Do you think so? But I promised you long, slow love in a bed. We haven’t even made it to the bed yet.” Madeleine groaned as he led her there. He pulled back the covers and settled her on cool linen sheets. His hands began to wander over her, exciting and abandoning a host of delicious places.

  “Come to me!” she gasped. “Is this love or torture?”

  He grinned. “Which does it feel like?”

  “I don’t know!”

  He flicked the silk off her wrists and rolled onto his back. “Then you take charge.”

  Madeleine stared at him. His manhood was hard and full and beautiful. She looked at the silk in her hands and wafted it gently over him, saw him tremble. With a mischievous grin, she bound his hands with the scarf, being careful of his burn. The bond wasn’t even knotted, and she knew he could break it if it was, but she knew, too, that it would hold him as her prisoner.

  Pulled by some force, she leaned forward till her heavy hair fell on him. She swayed her head so that the tresses brushed over his chest and thighs. She heard him catch his breath and looked up. “Is this love or torture?” she asked softly.

  “I don’t know.”

  She lowered her lips and touched the glistening tip of his shaft. It jerked. He groaned. She saw his hands clench.

  She throbbed to have him in her, but she wanted this, too. This power. She touched him with her tongue, watching him. He looked to be in agony, and she repented. She loosed the scarf and tickled him with it again.

  “Amazing what they teach you in a convent,” he muttered, and confiscated the teasing silk.

  Madeleine giggled. “It must be an instinct. But,” she added, “tell me true. Do men suck fluid from a woman’s breasts to stiffen themselves?”

  He burst out laughing. “Believe me, I was stiff as a poker before I touched your breasts. But let’s make sure.”

  His mouth was hot on her nipples, and he tongued and teased her until she moaned. Then, as he had promised, he sucked hard, so hard that she cried out and arched like a bow.

  Then, again as he’d promised, he entered her hard and strong, watching her with dark, heated eyes. Madeleine tried to watch him, to see his ecstasy, but reality vanished for her as the fever roared. She knew only the heat and power of him as she flew apart into heavenly fragments.

  She drifted together again and licked the salt sweat from his shoulder. “Could I live on this, do you think?”

  He laughed. “No.”

  “Are we going to do it again right now?”

  “No.”

  “Do you love me?”

  “No.”

  Madeleine’s eyes flew open. He smiled lazily. “You asked for that. Love is too mild a word. You are to me as my heart is to me.”

  “I don’t think love is a mild word, Aimery. It’s like the oceans and the storms, and the heat of the sun. It’s the power of a leaf as it breaks free of the earth, and the flow of the river that grinds the corn. It’s the joining in the bed, and the birthing of babes. With love we can do anything.”

  He disentangled them from her hair, and peeled their damp bodies apart so that he could gather her into his arms. “Then let’s use our love to grow things, sweet heart of mine. Both corn and babes. And a peaceful England for their future. God and wyrd willing.”

  Madeleine settled against him. “God and wyrd willing, dear lord of my heart.”

  Author’s Note

  I find looking back into the eleventh century like looking into a teasing mist. Generally, the view is obscure, but there are flashes of precise detail which only tantalize and make me wish we knew more. Anglo-Saxon poetry is like that. We have so little, but what we have is so beautiful it hints at the depth and subtlety of the culture.

  I have not to my knowledge violated any fact in this book, but I have had to invent many details. William, Matilda, Judith, Agatha, Edwin, Gospatric, Waltheof, and Hereward are real people known to us only from fragments. I apologize to their shades for the liberties I have taken.

  There is no evid
ence that Agatha ever tried to join her rebellious earl, but there is plenty that Matilda gave birth to the future Henry I in a hermit’s hut in Selby, Yorkshire.

  My only straight inventions are the tattoos on the hands of the English, and Hereward’s initiation ceremony. In the case of tattoos there is evidence that they were an Anglo-Saxon tradition, though I have found no details of design or location.

  Though opinions vary, I choose the view that the Norman Conquest was a case of warlike semi-barbarians overrunning a more peaceful and vastly more cultured nation. It is generally now held, for example, that the Bayeux Tapestry—that wonderful visual record of the Conquest—was English work, not Norman, simply because the Normans were not capable of it.

  As I researched this period, I realized how strongly modern English people, including myself, tend to side with the Anglo-Saxons rather than the Normans, as if the two nations had not in the end blended. The Conquest is remembered vividly as the last successful armed invasion of England, and Hereward as the last noble leader of resistance. The fact that he just might have come out of it all right in the end adds savor to his story.

  At the time I wrote this book I hoped to write more about the period, but I found it very bleak and moved on to the next generation, when then Anglo–Norman situation was more stable. These novels are: Dark Champion, Lord of Midnight, and The Shattered Rose.

  However, I do hope one day to write a novel about the true story of Waltheof and Judith, a very intriguing and mysterious tale.

  There is a slight link here in that the hero of Dark Champion, FitzRoger, is the son of that unpleasant brother of Aimery’s, Roger de Gaillard. Dark Champion will be reissued early in 2003, and Lord of Midnight, about FitzRoger’s friend, Renald de Lisle, is still available new. The Shattered Rose, with a very slight connection to the other books, is currently out of print.

  I am the author of twenty-three romances all set in my native England in three periods—Medieval, Georgian, and Regency. My most recent new novel was a regency historical, Hazard, published in May 2002, and the next will be St. Raven in February 2003.

  You can find a full list of my novels and novellas on my Web site: www.jobev.com, in addition to excerpts and background information about my books. There are even some samples from my unpublished writing. If you’d like to be updated about new and reissued books, send an e-mail to jo@jobev.com asking to be put on my mailing list. I also enjoy reading reader comments about my books.

  You can contact me by regular mail at: Jo Beverley, c/o The Rotrosen Agency, 318 East 51st Street, New York, NY 10022. If you would like a reply, I appreciate a stamped, self-addressed envelope.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s Imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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