Through a door, twin to the first, she went, and suddenly she stood outside Kirkston’s mighty walls, perched on a little stone landing.
It might have only been her imagination, but Wynne doubted it. The air was indeed clearer here, fresher and cooler. She sucked it into her lungs in great drafts, feasting upon the scent of the forests and fields, the river and sky.
The storm had left that washed scent over the earth, and the river plunged and fought the banks on its downward course to the distant sea. Did this river lead to Wales? she wondered, caught in a huge wave of homesickness. Could she simply fling herself into its watery embrace and be delivered into her homeland?
Oh, that would be so easy. But it was only wishful thinking.
Not conscious of her movements, she shed her hood and mantle. Next she removed her shoes and stockings.
Then she gingerly stepped down the steep ladder that slanted from the narrow landing to the rocky spit of land that edged the straight castle wall.
Two small boats lay upon the steep incline and rested now upside down. Wynne saw their pale bottoms but dimly in the darkness. However, the rushing water she sensed well enough. Like a living creature it heaved and twisted, glinting back whatever meager light the heavens offered.
How angry that river seemed. How mournful.
She moved forward, feeling her way with her toes until she felt the icy spray. Further she went, hiking her skirts above her knees and reveling in the frigid tug of moving water on her ankles and calves.
The sounds of the river enveloped her, and its winter-cold caress consumed all her attention. Kirkston Castle no longer rose at her back. This was not England at all. She was, for that moment at least, in her beloved forests, standing barefoot in a river she claimed as her own.
Then without warning another presence filled her, and she knew—as she’d known that very first day—that Cleve was there.
She didn’t turn. She stayed as she was, wishing she could will him away, wishing she could send him to the most distant edges of the far-flung world. Far beyond the reaches of Christendom itself. Yet in the very same moment she was perversely gratified by his nearness.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice a quiet sound against the wild, rushing night.
She shook her head in answer. What use in pretending? So he might ease his conscience?
She sensed when he moved closer. If she reached out behind her, she could have touched him. But she stared straight ahead, peering through the darkness, across the waters to the invisible shore beyond.
“Wynne.” His voice came from even nearer than she’d suspected. “I know this day has been … well, hard for you.”
A bitter smile flitted across her face. “Hard? Perhaps that is the word you would choose. But then, I’m surprised you even admit to that, convinced as you’ve been all along that this was best for my children.” She paused, and swallowed the lump rising in her throat to choke her. “As if you could know what was best for them.”
“Ah, Wynne. In many ways I do know. I was them, remember?”
She whirled to face him at that. “It’s not the same!” she cried, almost relieved to confront him at last. “You had your mother. You never lost her. But I … I have lost them!”
Though the darkness lay like a chasm between them, she accused him with her eyes and knew he received the message.
Yet he forged on, relentless as ever. “Do you mourn for them or for yourself? And think hard on your answer before you give it. Do you fear they shall suffer their loss less than shall you?”
Wynne drew herself up, but she was unable to completely still the trembling that overtook her, head to toe. She clenched her hands into fists so hard that her nails gouged her palms. “They shall not suffer a roof over their heads. Nor food for their bellies. Fine garments. Fine steeds. Everything that man may purchase they will undoubtedly possess. But what of a parent who loves them—?”
“Even you cannot doubt Lord William’s true affection for Rhys and Madoc,” Cleve said, interrupting her impassioned words.
“He is a stranger to them. And yes, he is glad to have them. But what of a year from now? Or two? Or five? When they are ill or frightened? Will he give them comfort as a mother would? As I would?” She paused for breath and thrust a wind-whipped lock of hair back from her cheek. “Even you had a mother.”
“But they need a father now.”
“Not him,” she vowed. “Not an Englishman.”
In the silence between them the river chortled, cold and mirthlessly onward. She knew her last words had been as much an insult to Cleve as to Lord William, and she would not deny to herself that she’d meant them as such.
She wanted to hurt him. She fairly ached to hurt him as he’d hurt her.
But he seemed even more determined to remain unaffected by her words.
“Perhaps they need both,” he offered. His hands spread wide in appeal. “Perhaps it need not be so final an arrangement as you fear. If you would consent to stay …”
He let the words trail off, let them be lost to the night elements. Yet that husky suggestion remained with Wynne, echoing in her head, both a promise and a threat resounding in her soul. She took a breath, bolstering her suddenly weakened resolve. But Cleve seemed able to sense her every emotion. He knew where she was the most vulnerable.
“Stay here, Wynne. Stay near to your sons. I can arrange it.”
She shook her head, fighting the terrible allure of it. To be near them always. To be near Cleve.
“No, no,” she muttered, wishing he did not fill her vision so. She glanced around, almost desperate now. Then, when no solution presented itself, she jerked about to stare once more across the black, swirling river. Her fingers curved desperately around the ancient Radnor amulet, and she took a step deeper into the icy water until it lapped at her knees. If only she could escape. From Kirkston Castle. From Cleve.
But it was not to be. Cleve’s hands found her shoulders, and without speaking he guided her back onto the shore. Only when she was seated upon one of the upturned boats did he release her, and then it was to pace restlessly upon the gravel-strewn bank before her.
“The thing is, if you stayed it would solve a multitude of problems.”
“Yours? Or mine?” Wynne responded derisively.
“Ours, Wynne. Ours.” He crouched on his heels before her and took her cold hands within his own. “Your children are all half English. To raise them on English soil would not be so terrible a thing. And they would be well taken care of. All of you would.”
“By you?” Wynne ventured in a voice she meant to be mocking, but which, even to her ears, sounded dismayingly weak.
“By me.”
For that moment it all seemed so easy. If she stayed, she would have to give up no one. Not the twins. Not Cleve … But just as quickly she realized that she would be giving up a home and a life of her own. She would be giving up herself to this man, and for what?
“And what of me? What would I do with my life here? Have you thought of that? How would I bear it—to live in England? Away from my forest. Away from my Wales.”
“I would …” He hesitated, and his thumbs rubbed along the sensitive flesh of her inner wrists. “I would do anything—everything—to make you happy here. We would be together, and you would soon come to see that England is not unlike your Wales. Our life here could be good.”
If she could simply have closed her eyes and willed his words to be true, Wynne knew she would gladly have done so. If her skills as Seeress were all they’d at times been purported to be, she would have made his pretty vision come to pass. But there was that part of her that was sensible, logical. Practical. What he dared to imagine was an impossible dream.
“Our life,” she began. “Our life could never be. There is no future for us together. Or do you forget the Lady Edeline?”
His hands tightened almost imperceptibly about hers. Then he sighed. “No. I do not forget Edeline.”
Wynne steel
ed herself to go on, though a new ache had unaccountably risen in her chest. “ ’Twill soon be announced—your wedding. She shall make a lovely bride, if not an altogether willing one.”
“What do you mean?”
Envy was what drove her to speak so. Envy and hurt. It was so obvious, so clearly apparent, that Wynne did not even attempt to pretend otherwise. “I mean that she is the one who asked for belladonna—the deadly nightshade. She is the one who casts her pretty darkened eyes in other directions than yours. Even Druce has not escaped her notice.”
She smiled grimly in the face of his silence. “Do I take it that you are jealous of her straying attentions?”
“You may take it any way you like,” he growled. “My marriage to Edeline is necessary if I am to keep you here. Her dowry lands, joined with the reward Lord William has promised me—”
“I will not hear this!” Wynne jerked to her feet and tried to sidestep Cleve. But he would not release her hands, nor when he stood would he let her pass.
“Wynne, listen to me. If you would just be sensible about this.”
“No! No, I will not be sensible. Not if I must demean myself. Lose all my self-respect. I am a woman, Cleve, not a possession. You English are all the same, rapists or no. You think a woman is to be owned, to be used and kept as will satisfy your urgings of the moment. But I am not some simpering—simpleton—Englishwoman. And I will never—” Her voice broke and her words came out on a sob. “No, never,” she finished brokenly. In that moment, an instant of sudden clarity—perhaps it was one of her visions—Wynne knew what she wanted of Cleve. She would have him for her own husband, to live in her forests and father their own children. She wanted to lie down with him and let him fill her again with his warmth and power and the very beginnings of a new life. He would make such a good father; he was a magnificent lover. He could be a very good husband if he so desired.
On that thought her animosity and need to hurt him fled. If she could, she would have healed them both of their wounds by the very strength of her longing for him.
Oh, Cleve, the cry came silent from her very soul. Why couldn’t things have been different for us?
As if he heard her cry, he pulled her fully against him. “Say you’ll stay,” he groaned the words against her mouth. His hands roamed her back as if he marked every rib, every muscle, every curve. He cupped her derriere, proving to her the depths of his own desire with the hard thrust of his hips against her belly. His tongue delved deep, and when he found welcome, he stroked urgently within her lips, slipping in hot, wet forays, deeper and deeper, seeking to know all her secrets.
Wynne accepted his every sensual aggression and wanted still more. Yet even amidst such an agony of longing, she nonetheless knew that there was one secret she must never let him know. Though she succumbed both to the physical and the emotional pleasures of his nearness, she kept that one bit of herself apart. If it were hard now to leave him, how much harder would it be if he knew her secret fantasies of them together? Of him loving her. Marrying her.
But that would never happen, and she well knew it. He could not be a husband to her. And she would not be merely a mistress to him.
She arched against him and tightened her fingers in the warm strands of his hair as he broke their kiss. They both gasped for breath. The very violence of her feelings for him was bewildering, and without thinking she began to kiss his neck and throat.
“By damn, woman,” he panted when her teeth nipped the smooth flesh alongside his neck. “Sweet Jesu,” he groaned when she moved her lips to the prickly skin beneath his chin. One of his hands moved down from her shoulder to run along her back. Then his other hand found her right breast, and the power of their previous joining came back to her in glorious detail.
Her hands slid down to his hips and urged him forward until their loins pressed close once more. Then in a bold move she had not herself anticipated, Wynne slipped one of her hands between their bellies and let herself touch the hard ridge of his manhood.
“Witch,” he muttered in a harsh tone. But to Wynne the word was the sweetest of caresses, a delight to her ears, a balm to her soul. If she did not prompt him to abandon his lifelong goals for her sake, at least she made him forget them when they were together like this.
A streak of lightning split the sky beyond the river, and then another, much closer. The night flashed brilliant with white light, then plunged them into darkness once more. But the blackness was heated and made transparent by the pure awareness between them.
She rubbed her flattened palm against him and heard his groan—felt it—upon her lips. His hands caught her head, tangling in her wind-blown hair and tilting her face up to his. Like a wild man he devoured her, and like a wanton she offered herself for his pleasure—and her own.
“I’ll make you stay,” he murmured in her ear as he dragged her to the ground with him. He pulled her to lie upon him and bent one knee to press up between her parted legs, forcing her to straddle him. “You’ll stay. You’ll want to stay.”
Wynne kissed him hard—anything to stifle those words that cast such a chill upon their fiery mating. But Cleve would not desist, and his hands cupped her face to halt her frantic kisses.
“Say you’ll stay,” he demanded. He kissed the curve of her neck and the hollow of her throat. “Say you’ll never leave me, Wynne. Say it.”
A huge bolt of lightning, accompanied at once by a crack of violent thunder, made them both jump. But though Wynne hoped it would divert him from his painful question, it was not to be.
He rolled them both over, covering her completely with his hard and virile body. Though she recoiled from his words, her body reacted on its own to the exquisite pressure of his arousal against her belly.
“Don’t talk anymore,” she whispered. “Just kiss me.” She circled his neck with her arms and tried to draw his face down to hers, but he resisted. His leg shifted to rub seductively against the juncture of her legs, and she writhed helplessly in reaction.
“Stay with me, my sweet Welsh witch. Say you’ll stay, and I promise to make you writhe this way every night. Stay, and I shall shower you endlessly with kisses. With caresses. Like this.” He nuzzled the warm place between her breasts. “Like this.” He found her taut and protruding nipples through the fabric of her kirtle and gown and bit on the aroused crests—first one and then the other—until she was panting and twisting in mindless desire.
“I’ll keep you sated with my loving so that you’ll forget anyplace except where we are together.” He’d done that already, she knew in some vague part of her mind. She was never conscious of where she was nor of what was right or wrong when he loved her this way. But to lose oneself so … It was too dangerous. Too frightening.
She looked up at him, and when their eyes met, they held in a long, telling connection. As if it literally fled her body, Wynne felt her resolve weaken, and that nagging voice of caution in her head was silenced at last. “Oh, Cleve,” she whispered as tears formed in her wide eyes. “I … I …”
An ear-splitting crash drowned out the last of her words. Lightning struck a tree directly across the river from them, and with a bright flash and a shower of sparks, it toppled into the raging river. So near had it come that the hair stood out on Wynne’s arms and the overcharged air seethed with restless energy.
Cleve had jerked in startled response and had thrown himself flat over her, protecting her head in the crook of his neck. Now, as they both looked up, an icy sheet of rain abruptly pelted them, pushed forward on an angry wind.
They’d been warned by the advancing lightning and distant thunder. They’d been given fair notice by the surging river riled by the storm brewing in the hills above them. But it had taken the mighty fist of God, she was later to think, throwing bolts of lightning upon her and dousing her with rain, to finally drive sense into her head and to save her from her own weak desires. She had been ready to consent to stay with him, to agree to become his mistress, the woman he turned to after doing his
duty to his wife. As Wynne sprinted across the mud-slick courtyard, fleeing Cleve while he wrestled with the two postern doors, she searched for some comfort at her unlikely salvation. For saved she had indeed been. Saved from a life of illicit pleasures and bastard babies. Saved from years spent longing for what could never be. He did not mean her to marry him; he’d never once spoken the words. But instead of comfort, she felt only an awful emptiness.
She stumbled over one groggy servant in her pell-mell flight through the great hall, then nearly stepped on another curled upon the bottom tread of the stairs. But she fled onward, unmindful of the wet trail she shed. She only knew that she must find her children and hold on to them. They were her life, not Cleve. And Wales was her home, not England.
In the darkened chamber she stripped herself of her, wet garments and donned a dry kirtle. Then she bound her wildly tangled hair in a strip of old linen and, trembling all the while, found Rhys and Madoc. They grumbled when she slid them apart. One of them flailed out, and she made out the words “a horse. No, two.” But once she lay between them, they both settled down.
They were warm, and she was safe. That thought circled around and around in her head as she tried to calm her rapid breath and still her galloping heart. They were warm, and she was safe.
But such a cowardly thought made her ashamed of herself. Their safety was more important than her own. She must bury her fears—and most of all her inappropriate desires—and tend sensibly to her sons’ futures.
She slid an arm about each of them, pulling them close until she smelled little boy mingled with rose water. How dear they were to her. Only yesterday they’d been a pair of squirming babes in her arms, and already they were tall, hale lads, eager to master every new skill or challenge they met. Soon they would be strapping youths and then men. Was she wise to oppose Lord William’s claim on them—and perhaps lose them the vast inheritance the man would bestow upon them?
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