by Shayla Black
Moments later, she felt his hand at her back while he nipped his way down her jaw. Suddenly, the cool air hit her shoulders and the swells of her breasts. Gwenyth opened her eyes in time to see Aric tug the gown down to her waist and his mouth envelop the hardened peak of her breast. A jolt of pure pleasure pulsed within her at the feel of his lips and tongue teasing her nipple through her thin chemise. She moaned, grabbing his shoulders more tightly.
With his hand beneath her back, Aric encouraged her to arch into him. As she did, he turned his attentions to her other breast, even as she felt his hands at her waist, her hips.
She could not think, could scarce breathe, for the feel of his mouth over her breast, laving, suckling, gently demanding. Her groan became a moan.
’Twas something of a shock to feel cool air upon her bare calves and thighs moments later. As if looking through fog, Gwenyth saw Aric’s large bronzed hands raising her chemise to her hips, felt his firm, callused hands skimming her flesh. At his feet lay her silken red dress. How had he undressed her without her awareness?
Before she could sort through her muddled thoughts or find a protest, Aric ran a light, teasing finger from the inside of her knee up toward the joining of her legs. She gasped as his touch climbed higher, then stopped a mere inch before the apex. But her pleasure kept peaking, and she realized with a wild rush that some part of her wanted his touch there.
Then his thumb slid over her, a mere brush. Her hips lurched off the bed at the unaccustomed touch, the spiraling delight. The gentle feel of his mouth on her bare stomach, a whisper below her navel, sent her need soaring higher.
Threading her hands through his thick, golden hair, Gwenyth pulled Aric closer, wanting these feelings to go on, for they were like bright colors, vivid and undeniable. Aye, she had seen Penhurst’s servants mating deep in the night on the floor of the great hall. Always she had thought their grunting gyrations crude and suffocating. She had not considered the wanting, the slow rush of desire that wound through the veins like the headiest of mulled wines.
When Aric’s impatient fingers pushed aside her chemise, she welcomed the sensations of cool air and his hot gaze upon her. Then the damp heat of his mouth closed over her bare breast. She gasped. As the silken tip of Aric’s tongue flicked over the hard peak of her nipple, her eyes flew open at riotous sensations pounding within her.
Her gaze locked with the seemingly uncomprehending depths of Dog’s eyes. The animal sat a mere foot away at the side of Aric’s small bed, watching intently and flapping his tail against the cottage’s dirt floor. She stiffened, realizing that engaging in this lovemaking with Aric was not only unwise, but, with their canine audience, it was discomfiting.
“Aric,” she whispered.
His answer was an unintelligible moan as he lifted his mouth from her breast and started toward the other. Gwenyth stopped him with a hearty push at his shoulders.
“What?” he scowled.
“The dog,” she said simply.
With a laugh, Aric sat up beside her. “So I have a modest little dragon, eh? I can put Dog out.”
“Nay. ’Tis more than Dog. We simply…cannot.”
Aric sighed, then curled a tender hand about her shoulder. “We can, Gwenyth. You are my wife. ’Tis time we sealed our union, as God intended.”
“But we… I…” she stuttered, hopelessly mired in a tangle of desire, regret, and apprehension. Why should her flesh desire a man who could not provide the future her heart needed? “We cannot.”
Anger hardened his features as he stood beside the bed and tossed her red gown over her meagerly clad body. “As you wish. But someday you must accept marriage to me, hermit or not. The law, the church, and the world already have.”
Before Gwenyth could protest that she had not meant to hurt him, Aric whistled to Dog, who followed him out the door. As she watched from the window while the mutt and his master disappeared into the ancient, shadowed forest, tears stung Gwenyth’s eyes.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Nearly a week had passed, largely wordless, between Aric and Gwenyth. In that week, he had tried to forget the feel of her beneath him, the taste of her skin, the beauty of her form by candlelight, the snap of her intelligent mind, as well as the sharp wit of her tongue. ’Twas impossible, he knew now, for he thought of little else.
Until the summons came.
From his chair beneath the eaves, Aric watched a man on horseback approach. The gentle rain falling across the misty green land obscured his vision. But as the rider drew closer, Aric caught sight of a crest on the man’s tunic. The Neville crest.
He closed his eyes in cold dread, one realization swirling in his head: Someone had sent for him.
God’s blood! Aric clutched the wooden carving of his naked wife in his suddenly damp palms and rose with a whispered curse. ’Twas no mistaking the other man’s demeanor, for his carriage was straight with purpose as he approached the cottage.
Despite the cool winds, sweat broke out across Aric’s chest and back, on his neck and face. He gripped the wooden carving between suddenly unsteady hands. Fear combined with anger and apprehension. What in hell’s realm did this herald want? And what of Gwenyth?
With a glance over his shoulder, Aric had his worst fear confirmed. She had heard the approaching horse and even now stared out the window, her expressive face rife with puzzlement. Lord help him. How would he explain the reason Northwell’s herald sought him?
“Stay inside, Gwenyth,” he instructed her softly.
“But who—”
“Inside,” he repeated with quiet force, then turned his attention back to the rider, now mere feet away.
Rather than invite the man into the cottage’s shelter, Aric went out into the soft rain, the chill of it drenching him. Surely only that caused him to shiver.
As Aric met the rider, he grabbed the horse’s bridle. “Halt. What business have you here?”
The rider dismounted and bowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously beneath his oily young face. “My lord, I have a missive for you from your esteemed brother.”
Stephen. Aric sighed, raking tense fingers through his damp hair. The whelp had always sought power at Northwell. Certainly he would not wish the return of the elder brother who could take that away from him. He breathed a sigh of relief.
“Where is this missive?” Aric asked finally.
The herald patted his dusty, damp tunic. “’Tis safe in here.”
“Let me see it.”
“But, my lord, the rain will destroy—”
“Let me see it,” he demanded, his patience short.
With obvious reluctance, the young nobleman withdrew the parchment from his red tunic and handed it to Aric.
Settling beneath the relative dryness of a nearby elm that towered above him in sweeping green strokes, Aric tucked the carving of Gwenyth into the crook of his arm and opened the missive.
My brother,
Turmoil is afoot. Gossip says the Lancastrians are plotting to overthrow King Richard and place ignoble Henry Tudor upon his throne. Richard seeks your vow to fight in his favor. You must return home and gather a larger army.
Stephen
Fury washed through Aric. How like Stephen to desire the power of being Northwell’s lord whilst being negligent of its responsibilities. Come home to raise an army for the defense of a man capable of murdering children? Return to the woman who had betrayed him by marrying his own father, to the keep which had brought him little but misery?
Nay, Stephen wanted to be the lord of Northwell, so he would have all of its duties.
Nor could Aric deny that for a moment he wished the note had come from Guilford, or even Kieran or Drake. He’d begun to miss them more and more of late, and blast Gwenyth for reminding him of their absence days ago.
With a bitter grunt, Aric tossed the missive to the ground and watched with grim satisfaction as the fat drops of rain struck the parchment with plunk after plunk, and the ink began to blur.
Th
e herald let out a horrified gasp and lunged for the missive. Aric stayed him with a raised hand.
“But, my lord—” His pale, earnest eyes pleaded.
“Leave it.”
“What message shall I return to my lord Stephen?” the herald asked.
A glance at the missive proved the rain had blurred the ink upon the page to little more than watery black streaks.
“Tell him I send no message,” Aric replied finally.
He felt Gwenyth’s gaze upon him, steady and questioning, from her perch just inside the window. Aric prayed the rider would not seek to break his journey inside the cottage. Little hope would he have then of keeping his past from his wife. The other man’s livery and his consistent use of “my lord” would no doubt give her broad hints regarding his secret.
After a long pause, the herald sighed and reached for his mount. “As you wish, my lord.”
“’Tis exactly as I wish,” he vowed, finding his next breath came more easily than the last. “Now be off with you. And do not return.”
His frown puzzled, the rider yanked on his mount’s reins, turned about, and disappeared into the rain.
Irritation and dread picked at Aric’s gut like a vulture upon a carcass, one painful nibble at a time. He pivoted slowly toward the cottage. As he suspected, Gwenyth stood in the portal, her bright blue gaze filled with speculation.
“Not now, Gwenyth.” He took long strides toward her, hoping he could pass her without another word between them.
His foolish hope died a quick death.
“Not now? ’Tis never with you, you infernal pig-minded droll. You tell me naught!”
“I have nothing to tell,” he lied.
She glared at him, her cheeks flushed with anger, her arms crossed beneath her breasts. The fact she looked like a passionate temptress offering her charms—if he ignored her scowl—only served to annoy him more. Why did he want her in a way he could never remember wanting any woman, even when she called him foul names and did her best to dig up his dishonorable past?
“Who was that man?” Gwenyth demanded, hanging on to the subject like a determined dog with a bone. “What did that missive say?”
“He came collecting taxes I refused to pay,” he improvised smoothly.
“Nay. I know all of Uncle Bardrick’s retainers and stewards. He is not among them, nor is that my uncle’s coat of arms.”
“How do you know he was not one of the king’s men?”
The glare she shot him told Aric once and for all he could not treat her as if she had the intellect of a child. “He wore no royal markings. And he bowed to you. Why?”
Aric sighed. He had to give Gwenyth credit. She missed very little.
“The man mistook me for someone else, and when I could not solve his problem, I asked him to leave.”
Gwenyth’s honeyed complexion only flushed with more color. “Were that true, you would not have so wantonly destroyed another’s missive. But since you are disinclined to tell me aught, I am disinclined to live here with you and accept you as a husband.”
“A threat?” he whispered, fighting a vague sense of panic that tightened his belly. Then he calmed himself with the reminder she had nowhere to go.
“Nay, a statement. Why should I wish to stay wed to a man I know not, who refuses any honest discourse?”
Though her words infuriated him, Aric saw her logic. Still, it changed naught. “You know the man I am today. It matters not who I was last month or last year. That man is gone, never to return.”
“Pity,” she shot back at him. “I’m certain he was more forthright and had a better disposition than a dead tree. I would have liked him better.”
She whirled around and darted into the cottage, shutting the door in Aric’s face.
Aric nearly ripped the door open and reminded her she seemed to like him well enough last week when he had her naked on his bed, but he bit the words back. A man experienced in the ways of sex could easily overwhelm an innocent like Gwenyth. Their near lovemaking had nothing to do with her possibly liking him.
For some reason, that fact irritated him. Why couldn’t the stubborn wench enjoy the indefinable flame that lay between them without probing into his past? And what the hell was he going to do about her?
* * * *
Four days later, birds sang a cheerful tune as Gwenyth hung clean clothes over nearby willow branches. She tried to disguise her shift, worn as it was, from her husband’s silent gaze, not that such mattered anymore. Where once he might have teased her about it, even whispered in that seductive timbre of his, he now ignored it—and her.
Adjusting the new gray dress about her shoulders, she reached for the brown woolen rag she could scarce call a gown anymore and draped it over the next branch.
Zounds, that man was stubborn, always insisting the past mattered not. ’Twas clear that herald had been no tax collector, no misdirected servant. He had sought Aric, more than like out of his past. Aric had turned the man away and been withdrawn since.
Calling the lout names did little, as he refused to rise to that bait. Traipsing about the house in her red dress, which she knew had once enticed him, earned her plenty of heated stares, which made something inside her ache. But still he refused to talk.
What in his past could be so awful, so sinful, that he refused to face it?
Gwenyth knew so little of what Arid hid so well that her speculation could go on for hours without bearing fruit.
Again, she sighed. For the past four days and nights, she had done her best to draw him into conversation, into her confidence. No more. If he could not see fit to speak to her like a human being, like a wife, then she had naught to say to the coxcomb.
She bit her lip. It could take him days, perhaps weeks, before he might notice her quiet. Already the air between them vibrated with sheer silence. Much more of it would surely unnerve her.
She stole a glance at her husband, only to find he held that infernal wooden carving of her nakedness between his powerful hands. Heat crept up her face until she realized he stared not at her bare likeness but over the tree-lined horizon as if it were endless and wise in its age. Like the walls of Penhurst had been a hundred years past, Aric’s expression appeared impenetrable. Gwenyth feared she would have to lay siege to him before he would ever notice her own withdrawal.
That meant she must continue to endure his silence, as well as the unfathomable energy between them.
Frowning, Gwenyth considered Aric and his unending stare across the damp-scented land. ’Twas as if he waited for something. His grim expression seemed to portend disaster.
Shaking her head, Gwenyth returned her attention to the laundry. His problem was not hers, since he had expressly chosen not to share it with her. Until he did, she would not show interest in him whatsoever.
* * * *
More than a week later, day dawned without fanfare, the sunrise obscured by haze and fog. Aric watched it from the hillside where he and Gwenyth had once talked of family and hopes, past and present, while saying naught of the future.
A future he would have to shape someday soon.
Beside Aric, Dog panted and whined, begging for his master’s attention. Absently, Aric stroked his coarse gray-brown fun. At his side, Dog settled, resting his canine jaw upon Aric’s thigh.
Sighing, Aric peered at the landscape around him. Fresh, damp grass carrying the scent of spring surrounded eons-old oaks that swept and swayed against the metallic sky, heavy with impending rain. He had come to know these lands as well as he had once known the hilt of his sword, every gentle swell and enticing valley memorized.
For months, the land had soothed him. Always, the view here had brought him peace, reminding him his life would hereafter consist of more than war and strife. As he had yearned for during the long winter, blossoms the yellow of pure sunshine colored the land like a banner of happiness and hope. Mingled with those blooms were some the blue-purple of a brilliant sky at dawn and a rare few the come-hither red of
Gwenyth’s lush mouth.
Today, Aric felt only turmoil, its talons reaching into the present to snatch him back into the past.
Suddenly, Dog tensed and raised his head toward the cottage. Aric glanced over his shoulder to find Gwenyth climbing up the hillside toward him. He cursed. His little dragon would want to fight. For days now, she had been itching to say something, to scream at him, he was certain. But she had remained damnably mute, until Aric himself had wanted to rail at the silence. Unhappily, he wondered when being alone had ceased to hold appeal for him.
Before he could say aught to Gwenyth, he saw another figure emerge over the top of the hill, that of a man, lean and striding with great purpose.
Kieran!
Surprised joy spiked within Aric. He had missed his friend—all of his friends—during his retreat. ’Twould be good indeed to see a man he thought of as brother, even if Guilford had sent the scamp to retrieve him.
A wry smile curved his lips. Kieran was likely to be annoyed, for Aric knew he had not made himself terribly easy to find. Nor would his friend find him willing to return to his old life.
Rising to his feet, Aric made his way toward Kieran, noting some changes in his friend. His shoulders seemed broader, his waist leaner. For a man who had oft prided himself on his appearance, ’twas a shock to see Kieran’s brown-red hair in desperate need of a blade and a fresh scar beneath his ear, skipping along the curve of his jaw.
Before Aric could comment, Kieran drew him into a brotherly embrace.
“Aric, ’tis good to see you.”
In returning the embrace, Aric was struck by a sense of belonging and connection, of having something precious lost, then suddenly found.
“’Tis good to see you, as well,” he said finally, then stepped back. “Though I daresay I’ve scarce seen you look so…rugged.”
