by Jill Barnett
Were they real? She had thought they were dreams. Tricks of her mind. She stared down at the floating soap foam in the water, and she felt ashamed.
“I see you are most recovered, Clio.”
She whipped her head around toward Merrick’s deep voice. Wet strands of long hair slapped her face and body and her poor maid, who dropped the towel.
“I’m sorry, my lady,” she said, looking as flustered and as naked as Clio felt.
Clio snatched the towel from her maid and awkwardly wrapped it around her. It was not very large and she wasn’t sure what to cover first.
“You have much color to your skin,” Merrick said in complete seriousness, yet she felt he was laughing behind those blue eyes. Strange that now they did not look cool or icy.
His gaze lingered on her for a moment, traveled a hot path from the top of her wet head to her bare toes.
A stab of an odd hunger, something she had never felt before, overcame her. She had to fight the urge to place her hand on her belly.
With a boldness she thought bordered on madness, she straightened, standing tall. She returned his look, then she dropped the towel.
Chapter 19
“Now ’tis you who have much color to your skin, my lord.”
The imp stood there boldly, in all her naked and innocent glory, and taunted him with his own words. He almost congratulated her.
Instead he just looked his fill. Her skin was flushed from the bath and her hair was slicked back and shone like the sleek heads of the seals that played in the surf near Cardiff.
He had thought she was a small woman, dainty and petite. But her breasts were full and the pale color of a lamb’s nose, her waist small and her hips lush. He wondered what the men of the Church would have to say about the golden color of her nether hair. He knew Roger would have plenty to say, perhaps even an ode, pretty words to make the earthy subject sound romantic.
But there were no pretty words in Merrick, just emotion, strong and fierce. He felt desire rise within him as sharp as a battle cry, passionate and burning through his blood. His hands itched to touch her, his mouth to taste her, but it wasn’t just hot desire that held him there. It was something stronger, a bond of some kind that told him he could have spent a lifetime just looking at her.
But her gasping maid, a plump country girl with ragtag hair the color of newly mown hay, jumped in front of her and blocked his view. “This is not done. My lady … My lord … You are not yet wed. I … I—” she began to stammer.
“Lady Clio.” Merrick made a gallant bow so well done he should have received another earldom for it. Then he straightened. “When you have finished, I would have a word with you.” He turned to leave, but paused with his hand on the door. He looked back and smiled. “Do I need to come fetch you?”
“No.” Clio said in a haughty tone, never once looking the least bit shy. “I’m certain I can find you most simply, my lord.”
He gave her a quick nod and closed the door behind him.
By the time he had left the hall, gone outside, and turned the corner of the stable, he was whistling.
It was not simple to find him.
He was not in the solar, nor in the great hall. The baker had seen him with the smithy after he had broken his fast, but the smithy hadn’t seen him since midday, when the master mason had needed him.
The master mason had gone to the nearby quarry for more stone, alone, but a guard had seen the earl with Thomas the Plowman, John at the Well, and William the Cooper. The earl had left Thomas, John, and William when Brother Dismas had complained that some of his men had been dicing in the nave and God’s wrath was a truly frightening thing and no little bad luck for Camrose.
But, when she found Brother Dismas, he hadn’t seen the earl since just before Sext, when Sir Isambard sought and found him. Now, no one knew where Sir Isambard was.
Finally she found the older knight at the stables, where Thud, Thwack, and Tobin were mucking out the stalls.
“Sir Isambard?”
He turned around. No smile. No change of his expression, just the same gruff face. He gave a nod of his head. “Aye, my lady?”
“What are those boys doing?”
“Mucking out the stable.”
“I can see that. Why?”
“’Tis the last of their punishment for disobeying Lord Merrick’s orders.”
“They are still being punished?”
“Aye. This time for the herb garden.”
She started to argue that it was not them but herself who should have been punished for that, but the two young boys came up to her, spades held proudly in their hands like battle swords,
“The earl told us …”—Thud held his head high and proud—”if we are to become knights someday, we must learn to obey his orders.” He paused and looked up at her from eyes that pleaded with her to understand. “Even in defiance of you, my lady.”
Thwack just nodded slowly. “Me too. But we shall become knights someday and protect you with our lives.”
Tobin was foolish enough to snicker.
Sir Isambard gave the squire a hard look. “Lord Merrick has given you a special job, de Clare.”
“I have served my lord for a long time,” Tobin said with pride and pompousness. He stood over Thud and Thwack and said pointedly, “My lord saves more important service for those of us who have served him well.”
He was so cocky Clio wanted to clout him with a spade.
“Aye, my lord earl rewards those who deserve it,” Sir Isambard agreed with great seriousness.
“What, sir, is this important service?” Tobin swaggered in a circle around Thud and Thwack, then turned his handsome face toward the old knight. He wanted the old knight to announce his select duty in front of the younger boys just to make them feel bad.
Sir Isambard rubbed his chin thoughtfully, then said, “When you’ve finished cleaning the stable stalls, de Clare, you will be in charge of training.”
“Training?” Tobin frowned.
“Aye.” Sir Isambard planted his hammy hands on his hips, then added, “Thud and Thwack.”
Tobin scowled. “Training them for what?”
“To be the newest de Beaucourt pages.”
Thud and Thwack let out whoops of glee so loud they drowned out Tobin’s curses.
Had Merrick been there at that very moment, Clio would have thrown her arms around him and done whatever he bid her. For a few minutes anyway.
She had never seen those two lads so happy. She almost cried. Sir Isambard clapped Tobin on the shoulder harder than Clio supposed was necessary. Merrick’s squire had a sick look on his face; he looked as if he had just eaten bad flounder.
“Sir knight?” Clio called out to the older man, who still hadn’t smiled. “Have you seen my lord?”
“Aye, my lady. He is up on the battlements, there.” Sir Isambard pointed north.
She waved her thanks, turned with her skirts clutched in her fists, and ran like a loose child toward the stone stairs. By the time she reached the topmost archway that led out to the wall walk, she was out of breath, so she stopped, placed a hand on her heaving chest, and leaned against the wall, waiting till her breathing slowed.
“Are you going to make me wait for you every time we’re to meet?” Merrick stood in the outer archway, his hand gripping the carved rim of the arch. Half of his face was cast in shadow, but the half she could see was not angry. He looked amused. As if he was enjoying her.
She took a deep breath, raised her chin, and said with utter nonchalance, “Perhaps.”
“Two long years’ worth?”
So he’d discovered her game.
“Probably longer.” She strolled toward him as if she hadn’t been running so hard her breath could not keep up.
Together they walked along the battlements, where the stones were stained in places with the deep brown color of old blood. She was not certain she would have noticed those bloodstains before the incident with the Welsh. She had never been at
tuned to such things.
This section of the wall was high above the castle, where the wind blew stronger and the air grew cooler. She felt everything around them, the sky, the wind…each other.
Below, the castle was bustling, but up here, it all sounded very far away, another world below them, while they were like clouds that blew toward someplace far in the distance where their life paths would meet.
He was silent, so she turned and looked up at him to try to gauge his thoughts. He was leaning back against the stone tower, his arms crossed over his chest. One knee was bent, and his boot was propped against a stack of rocks piled below the crenellated wall.
He stared off at the horizon, where the green hills and clusters of trees met a blue and cloudless English sky. She leaned back against the yellow stone of the tower and wondered what the rest of her life would be like with this strange man who spoke and looked so gruff yet seemed to have a gentle side.
“I expect to be obeyed when I give an order.”
So much for his gentle side, she thought.
“And especially by those whom it is my duty to protect.”
He sounded like her father. She chewed her lip and listened.
“I do not give orders because I am cruel or selfish or to torment you, Clio. I do so for safety reasons or for what is best for your land, which has been given to me to safeguard.”
When she said nothing, he continued. “You will not find me difficult to live with. But when I give an order, I expect to be obeyed. It matters not whether I give that order to my men, to my servants, or to my wife.”
“I am not your wife yet.” The words slipped from her mouth without a thought. It was all she could do not to rush and say, “Wait! I take them back!”
He didn’t move or speak, and because of it, her rash words seemed to echo in her ears and made her feel foolish and sound childish. She was not petulant, usually, and to hear herself sound so was ugly.
The fact that she acted so in front of Merrick seemed to suddenly bother her even more. For some strange reason she cared not to think on, his good opinion of her mattered.
She stared at her hands. “I should not have said that, my lord.”
“Perhaps your challenging tone was not wise, but I am getting used it.”
Her head shot up. The look he gave said he was teasing her. She almost smiled.
He continued, “And I would have you speak to me with honesty.” He paused, his expression edged with a harsh tautness that said this question was important, and not simple. He searched her face. “Tell me now. The truth, my lady. Do you not wish to wed me?”
“I did not say that.”
“While I was gone for all those years, did you give your heart away to another?
“No. No.” She shook her head. “There is no one else.”
“Then you agree to the marriage.”
She looked at him then, and found she could no more tell him no than she could flap her arms and fly around the watchtower. “I agree.”
His face showed no emotion, but she felt something pass between them, something that felt like desire.
“I want you to come to me as a willing bride, Clio. So make certain you mean those words.”
“I mean them. I will wed you, my lord.”
“Freely.”
She nodded and started to turn away.
He moved his head, bending down slightly so he could still see her face. “Look into my eyes and say it.”
“It.”
For just a moment she thought he might smile at her, this stern, but puzzling man, the warring knight and close friend to the king, a man who had nursed her and who was to be her husband.
The expectant and intense look he gave her said more than words. She sighed and wished her future husband had a sense of humor more akin to hers.
“Freely.” She had repeated the word he wanted, then added words of her own, “I will wed you, Lord Merrick, of my own free will.”
“Good.”
She started to move again, but he stopped her with a gentle hand on her good shoulder.
She looked back at him.
“It is customary to seal the promise with a kiss of faith.”
Her gaze flicked to his mouth, which was wide and still in that tense line. The dark smudged shadow of a beard surrounded his lips and lined the strong lines of his jaw and cheeks. His neck was corded with muscles, for it took a strong man to wear the weight of mail, especially the hood and collar.
She had lifted her father’s once, when she got the idea into her head to become his squire so she could go to a tournament in Normandy. But she had given herself away the first night, when she had to use both hands to lift his mail hood.
Her father had laughed, claiming she—a woman—would make no squire. She told him that after lifting the hood, she understood why men were so thick-headed.
But now, as she looked up into the face of the man she had just agreed to wed, she saw that his eyes were that same cool blue under black winged brows. Yet this time they held no anger, no icy facade, but instead the same blue-hot gleam she had seen when he kissed her in front of his men and when she had dropped her towel.
She was level with his chest, so she crooked her finger at him. “Your cheek, please, my lord.”
He did not bend down to her. A second later he lifted her off her feet and kissed her right on the mouth. His large hands held her only by the waist; then he turned and pressed her against the stone wall with his body while one hand slid up and cupped the back of her head, protecting it from the sharp edges of the stone.
His breath tasted fresh and green, as if he had recently cleaned his teeth with a hazel twig. She could smell the scent of the spring sun on him, that warm and yeasty smell. There was no odor of leather, road, or of horse about him this day.
His tongue flicked over her lips. She opened her eyes in surprise and found him watching her. He pulled back and dragged his lips softly over her brows, then down to her lids, so that she had to close them again.
He was so gentle. The kisses were like whispers, soft and breathy and warm. His lips moved to her ear. “Open your mouth to me.”
This time he did not seek to take from her, but asked her to give, the same way he had made her admit she would wed him. He was giving her the chance to take control, and they both knew what that meant.
She could never claim she was forced by him.
Then his lips covered hers again; his tongue filled her mouth and played with hers, brushing it and licking and tasting her, running over her teeth and then slowly tracing each lip, only to thrust back inside and send her to a place where she had no thoughts in her head, where all she could do was feel, where her blood raced through her body as if it were poured from a vat of boiling oil.
He tasted of everything she had ever loved: of honeyed figs and sweet Sicilian oranges, of almond milk and wild black cherries, of raisin cream and rose pudding, and of a woman’s dreams.
Her arms slid up his chest and around his taut neck. She clung to him, because she didn’t know what it was she wanted. She was chilled one minute, then burning the next, as if she had caught some strange yet beautiful fever from the moon and the sun.
She pressed her body against his because she felt a restless need to move against him, to rub his body with hers, and to try to climb inside of him. It was as if there was something she needed desperately awaiting her there.
He groaned something against her mouth, started to pull away.
She gave a small cry of disappointment that came from deep inside of her and made her sound like a small bird that had fallen from its nest.
He pressed his hips against her and pinned her to the tower wall, then used both hands to cup her face. He kissed her again. His mouth was urgent and pressed harder than before, his tongue battering hers with strong and powerful strokes. It was almost as if he were being forced against her by some unseen hand, forced to kiss her to prove he had won her as his own.
This was no gentle
lover’s kiss. It was the kiss of a warrior. Her warrior.
He tore his lips from hers abruptly.
She had been so caught inside their kiss that she had to shake the strange lightness from her head.
It took a moment until his face no longer blurred before her. When her sight cleared, she could see that his eyes were on her mouth. His breath came in faster pants, as if he had been fighting or riding hard.
Her own rapid breath mixed with his, and the wind over the battlements swallowed it. Her heartbeat slowed first in her wrists, then her chest and her ears, until it beat once again with a slow, strong rhythm.
He gripped her by the waist and stepped back, setting her on the stones. She looked away, embarrassed by what had passed between them. She felt like a wanton, like the lush dairymaid with the white skin and rosy cheeks who used to seduce her father’s men by pressing her body against theirs and luring them behind the hayrick.
This weak-willed, amoral Clio was foreign to her and she was frightened by what she’d done. She could feel her hands begin to shake, so she clasped them tightly and tried to hide them in the folds of her tunic.
“Are you afraid to look at me?”
“No.” She did not raise her head, just spoke the word that blatantly denied exactly what it was she was feeling—fear.
Because she was afraid of what she’d see when she did look at him. To complete her humiliation, she felt her eyes swell with tears.
Oh, no, not now. Don’t cry.
She bit her lip, but it didn’t help. The tears spilled onto her cheeks.
To her horror she felt his hands on her shoulders. He turned her around and pulled her against his chest. She kept her face hidden and tried to stop crying.
“Clio.”
She couldn’t respond because she knew he’d hear those tears she tried to hide, tears she hardly understood.
“You are crying?”
She looked away.
“Did I hurt you?”
“No.”
“Tell me why you are crying.”
“I don’t know why. I just feel like crying.” She pushed at his chest, but he refused to let her go. She slowly raised her face to his and saw his mouth descending again.
