by Betina Krahn
“Well, no more,” she proclaimed. “From now on, you’re not to blade fight within the borders of Mercia. I forbid it.”
“You forbid it?” he said, leaning back on one leg and sending Gasquar an incredulous look. “What on earth makes you think—”
Pushing and jostling occurred beside them, and a number of red-faced fellows pushed through the crowd carrying what appeared to be a set of clothes stuffed with straw to resemble a man, topped with a makeshift stuffed head. Behind them Castor and Pollux, Elder Hubert’s strapping nephews, loped up with their bows in their hands.
“Yer Grace—look here! Castor done it—he sunk all five shafts, dead on center!”
Unaware of the volatile scene they had interrupted, they turned merry faces and nods of respect on Thera, then hauled the straw man around so both Saxxe and Thera could see the front. The feathered shafts of five arrows were jutting from the torso of the dummy . . . exactly in the area that on a real man would have contained a beating heart. Thera gasped softly and put her hand to her throat.
“Excellent work!” Saxxe declared, clapping the blushing Castor on the shoulder. “A fine display of marksmanship.”
Thera wheeled and pushed her way through the crowd, striding for the archery range. Several men, seeing where she was headed, ran before her to halt the firing. But she didn’t have to cover the entire length of the field to see the straw men set up in front of the usual circular targets, or to confirm that they bristled with arrows shot into what on live men would have been arms and legs, torsos and heads. She stood staring at those substitute humans and felt a wave of weakness flooding up from her knees. She had to spread her feet to keep from swaying.
“This is your work,” she charged when Saxxe caught up with her. “You had them make straw men and practice shooting at them.”
He scowled, unable to fathom what she found so upsetting about a few bits of rag and straw with arrows in them.
“Yea, I suggested it. In my experience, enemies seldom come at you with red circles as big as barrel heads painted on them. I believe it’s time they practiced firing at something more like a real archer’s target . . . something that would do Mercia more good when a defense is needed.”
The shock of having her suspicion so openly confirmed left her speechless. Without a word or a nod to any rightful authority, he had taken it upon himself to begin training her men to fight with their longbows. He was spreading his combative experience with the world into their thinking, tainting their manly pleasures with thoughts of battle.
“Mercia doesn’ t need deadly archers . . . or an armed force, or a defense of any kind. For centuries we have dwelt in safety, sheltered within these mountains, and we’ll go on that way. Few outside our borders know of Mercia. And even if they did, our valley is inaccessible.”
“I found my way in,” he countered.
“Nay,” she said angrily, “I led you in. That was a grave error. And letting you roam freely about my kingdom was clearly another. But I will not make the mistake of letting you fill my people’s heads with talk of fighting and of threats that do not exist.”
He gave her a tense, searching look. “Can you truly believe that Mercia is inviolable, that you are completely safe against all harm here? After what you experienced in Nantes and on the road afterward, how can you possibly think there is no threat to your kingdom? Dieu—have you already forgotten where I first found you . . . in an alley behind a tavern . . . in the hands of half a dozen Mongol-Slavs?”
The high color began to drain from her face and she took a step back. He countered with a step forward, determined to make her remember and understand.
“Can you not recall the smell of burning timber as the city was slowly plundered . . . the cries of women and children in the streets?” he demanded. “Have you so quickly forgotten what happened before your very eyes to the Village of LeBeau?”
Her face grew stiff and pale, her body rigid. When she did not answer, he looked straight into her eyes and saw there the tumult she refused to show before her people. The contrast of her supremely controlled posture and expression and the roiling fear he glimpsed in the depths of her eyes stunned him. His anger and frustration began to melt.
She did remember the horrors of her journey. Indeed, she recalled them all too well. Was he the only one who could see how frightened she was?
For a long moment they stood, gazes locked.
She could feel his tawny eyes probing, reaching inside her to places she didn’t want to open to anyone. He had no right to see into her very soul.
But there was no other person in the whole world who could penetrate the barriers that years of training and self-control had built around her emotions . . . no other who could know the deepest doubts and yearnings of her heart. It was only for Saxxe Rouen to know her in that way . . . only for Saxxe Rouen to be the part and counterpart of her soul.
In the softening depths of his eyes she glimpsed a deepening well of understanding. He saw that she was afraid, and yet there was no condemnation in his face, no contempt, and no triumph. He simply accepted it.
Trembling, she tore her gaze from his and backed away.
“I have not forgotten, Rouen,” she said, raising her chin. “And I have sworn on my honor that I will never allow any of that to happen here. The terrors and strife of the outside world will never reach past the mountains of Mercia.”
She did not wait for a rebuttal; she retraced her steps to her horse. When she had mounted and was riding back to the city, the men turned to Saxxe with questions.
“What will we do, seigneur?” “Do we have to stop our training?” and “Can we still use the straw men or not?” they asked. Then came the most pertinent question of all: “Is the princess right, seigneur? Are we safe?”
How could he answer them? He watched Thera’s form growing smaller and disappearing into the city. After a moment, he sheathed his blade and flashed them a determined grin.
“The Saracens have a saying: To live in peace, keep your sword sharp. I don’t know about you, but I will be here tomorrow afternoon, and each afternoon, training, practicing. I pray your princess is right, that Mercia never needs archers or weapons or warriors. But it is better to have them and never need them than the other way around.”
* * *
At early eventide, just before the ringing of Vespers, Thera emerged from hearing the songs and recitations of the priests’ school pupils in the audience chamber. She paused in the Great Hall for a few moments to speak with the proud parents who had been permitted to attend with her. As she complimented their children’s accomplishments, a frightful noise rose outside . . . sounds of rushing and shouting. She hurried toward the front doors, then fell back at the sight of a frantic crowd bearing down on the entrance of the palace. Well before they reached the doors, she could make out Castor and Pollux, Elder Hubert, Gasquar, and Randall, the smith, at the forefront of the throng. They seemed to be straining, as if hauling something.
Cedric materialized at the edge of the crowd and came barreling through the door, huffing and puffing: “Out of the way! He’s hurt—make way!”
“Who is hurt?” Thera started forward, alarmed. Then she saw Saxxe lying limp and unconscious in the arms of the group at the front of the crowd, and gasped. “Saxxe?” Shock froze her to the spot, so that Gasquar and the others had to shoulder her aside to carry him into the hall. Jostled back to life, she channeled her rising panic into more productive paths and took charge immediately.
“This way! Carry him to my quarters—they’re closer. Cedric—show them where!” She seized one of the parents and ordered him to go for her physicians, then hurried to catch up with the men carrying Saxxe. “Is he hurt badly? What happened?”
“He was on the roof of the new smithy . . . when a plank broke . . . and he fell all the way to the ground!” Cedric panted out, bustling beside them. “Don’t know how bad it is. No blood . . . but it knocked him senseless.”
They carried him into Ther
a’s sumptuous quarters, through the glass-windowed solar, and straight to the bed in her inner chamber. They deposited him as gently as possible on Thera’s massive bed, then stepped back as old Esme and Thera anxiously wedged their way between to have a look at him. He wasn’t bleeding, and a cursory feel of his limbs seemed to indicate nothing was broken. But the sight of him—so still and oddly pale beneath his sun-browned skin—sent a crushing wave of anxiety through Thera. He couldn’t be badly hurt; he just couldn’t!
By the time the physicians and the leeches arrived, she was gray with worry. The physicians insisted they slather him with pilasters and pour him full of herbal philters, but the leeches argued that he needed to be bled and purged, not sweated and stuffed. Thera lost patience with the lot of them and sent them all packing, keeping only Gasquar, Lillith, and old Esme to help tend him.
His skin grew hot and old Esme suggested they bathe him with cloths dipped in cool water. It was only then that Thera realized one of the reasons he looked so strange to her: he was wearing hose and a tunic beneath his cross braces . . . real clothes, just as her elders had said. When the cloths and basins were brought, Thera climbed onto the far side of the bed to help Gasquar remove his garments so they could bathe him. They wrestled his cross braces from him, then faced the task of removing his tunic, which had to be drawn up and over his head.
“He would have to choose today to start wearing clothes,” Thera muttered as they lifted and tugged and rolled him from side to side to work the garment up and over his head. It took a while longer to remove his boots, then she and Lillith turned aside while Gasquar removed his close-fitting hose and covered him strategically with the linen sheet.
Saxxe’s eyelashes parted to reveal slits of canny gold, and when he saw only Gasquar working over him, he opened his eyes completely, startling his old friend. In a blink, he grabbed Gasquar’s wrist and signaled him to remain silent with a finger against his lips. When he nodded toward Thera and grinned, the Frenchman’s scowl of confusion melted into a lusty grin of comprehension.
“Finished,” Gasquar declared a moment later, and Thera and Lillith turned back to the bed. Saxxe’s eyes clamped shut once more and Gasquar wagged his head and stared in admiration at his wily friend. Trust Saxxe to find a way to turn a potential disaster into an opportunity for pleasure. “Sacre Mere—I have seen such things before. It may be hours, even days, before he wakes. But he must have water, and when he begins to burn he must have the cool cloths. Perhaps we should take watches . . . to sit with him through the night.”
“I’ll take the first watch,” Thera said. “He’s in my bed and . . . I couldn’t sleep a wink, anyway.” She glanced at Gasquar, then Lillith. “Both of you . . . go and get some rest. I’ll call you if he stirs.”
With Gasquar and Lillith gone, Thera sent Esme on to her own bed, promising to call the old servant if she was needed. Then she sat alone, watching his slow, shallow breathing, praying with all her heart that he would be all right. All of her distrust of him and all her fears for Mercia faded beside the thought of losing him. Whether to death or to the world outside Mercia’s borders if he someday left her . . . it would be like losing a part of her very body and soul.
After a while, she dribbled some wine between his parched lips, then retrieved a vial of rose-scented oil to soothe them. Her moist fingertips floated from his mouth along his bronzed cheeks, stroking and comforting, then trailed lovingly down the corded column of his neck and across the healed mound of his chest. He was so strong, so vital . . . she touched him to comfort herself as much as him.
In the darkness inside Saxxe’s head, every sensation was magnified. Her touch was like living fire, spreading across his shoulder and chest . . . then curling around his nipple . . . lapping that sensitive peak again and again. It was exquisite sensual torture.
She felt the catch in his breathing and looked up. His eyes opened and struggled to focus on his surroundings, coming to rest on her.
“You’re awake!” she exclaimed softly, her anxiety melting in a hot surge of relief. It was all she could do to keep from throwing her arms around him. “Are you in pain? Where do you hurt?”
“My head,” he said in a hoarse whisper.
“Here?” she said, running her fingers over his temples and back through his softly tangled hair, searching. “Or here? You do seem to have a lump.” Her fingers found a swollen place at the base of his head and massaged gently, wringing a moan from him.
“My shoulder, too,” he said. When she ran her hands experimentally over the sun-bronzed shoulder nearest her, he closed his eyes and swallowed hard. “No, the other one.” She began to gently massage the powerful muscles with delicate fingers.
“I don’t feel anything . . . perhaps it’s just bruised.”
Her body was arched over his, moving rhythmically as she kneaded his shoulder. From his vantage point below, he had a delicious view of the curve of her unbound breasts and the tantalizing strain of the silk across her roused nipples. He watched those erotic peaks jiggle and press against her tunic, and some of the heat rising in his blood began to settle in his loins.
“And my ribs,” he whispered, touching them with an artful wince.
She slid her hands down his chest, pressing tenderly . . . sending quivers of pleasure through his belly and loins. He grabbed handsful of the coverlet and groaned softly. “And my . . . hip.”
Ahhh, such biddable fingers, he thought, adrift on a warm sea of anticipation as her touch skimmed his side and dipped beneath the linen sheet covering his hips. If only the rest of her were as accommodating. If he had guessed she would be so concerned for him, he might have arranged a fall from a roof earlier. The feel of her cool hands just inches away from the burning center of his desires registered in his loins with a jolt, and she paused mid-stroke.
At some point her concern for his health had dissolved in a rising tide of sensual nuance. She was suddenly holding her breath, aware of every aspect of her body in relation to his: the exact distance between her breasts and his chest, the heat of his body radiating into hers, and the tangy male scent of him . . . the softening of her body and the subtle hardening of his. His skin seemed to grow hotter beneath her hands, and her eyes were drawn to the lengthening ridge rising up the center of his belly . . . just inches from her fingers.
Hidden behind a veil of lashes, her eyes traced that elongating shape, remembering the satiny texture of it, the pulsing muscularity of it, the exquisite searing heat of it imbedded in her depths. She blushed and ripped her gaze away, only to have it catch in his. And the dark glint of his eyes said he had seen the direction of her eyes and knew the drift of her longings.
His hands shot from his sides, seized her shoulders . . . and she was toppling onto the bed, across him, before she could blink. “Ohhh! Sa-axxe—” In that same smooth motion, he rolled onto his side and slid her onto the bed next to him. She found herself on her back with her legs draped over the side of his hip. He shoved up onto one elbow and pulled her against his bare chest, grinning like a devil.
“Y-you—but you—” It took her a moment to understand the gleam in his eye. “You’re not injured!”
“Ah, but I was. You felt the lump on my head,” he said with a low, seductive laugh that rumbled through her body. He seized her hand and raised it to his mouth, pressing a kiss on her palm. “Your hands seem to have banished the pain. Such marvelous hands.” He kissed her wrist, then her elbow. “Ummm . . . such lovely arms.” He pressed a kiss onto one of her breasts, nuzzling its hardening tip with his nose. “And such wonderful breasts. Dieu, woman, you’re a feast!”
She opened her mouth to protest, but he quickly pulled her closer, covering her lips with his. His kiss went on and on . . . so soft and liquid, and relentlessly tender . . . impossible to resist precisely because it could be so easily overcome. His gentleness called forth powerful longings in her . . . enticing her to give, to complement that possession which allowed room for a free response. Her whole body began
to tremble with need for the completion and certainty she found in his arms.
He began to stroke her with long, leisurely caresses that made her want to hold her breath at the end of each one, praying there would be another. She quivered under his touch and arched into his hands, demanding more . . . a firmer possession, a claiming touch. And he knew the time had come.
“Give me this night, Thera,” he said softly against her kiss-swollen lips.
“And what will you give me if I do?” she whispered, her eyes shining. “If I recall properly, you still owe me four pleasures.”
He laughed softly. “And you dare call me profit-minded.” He rolled onto his back and pulled her atop him, so he could have both hands free. “You’ll have your pleasures, Princess . . . and then some.”
Chapter Seventeen
Thera’s gown and thin chemise were soon a heap on the marble floor and her silken slippers lay in far-flung corners of the chamber. The silk cords and strings of pearls that had bound her braids were lost in the rumpled bed covers. Saxxe ran his fingers through her hair, loosening it, draping it about her body like a veil . . . trapping a handful of it over her breast and caressing both at once.
Sinking onto the bed beside him and into another voluptuous kiss, she both recalled and experienced sensation . . . his moist lips sliding across her closed eyes, nibbling her ears, and parting to string soft, tonguing kisses around her throat like erotic jewels. Excitement unfurled in her like a dew-drenched blossom opening her senses, rousing each nerve to hungry expectation under his hands.
“The kiss is yours . . . and the caress. And the joining will come. Now you’ll learn the fourth pleasure,” he whispered with a wine-potent stare that made her breasts ache and her womanflesh feel hot and empty. Then he shifted slightly onto his back and took both of her hands in his. “The fourth pleasure is taking.”
She pushed up onto one elbow, frowning, and his stare muted into a sensual smile. “You have learned what pleasure is. Now learn the ways it can be done. Take what pleasure you want of me. Take my heat, my hardness, my strength . . . take what is mine and make it yours.”
