Norma shook her head. “’Tis a sad thing, but not unknown. His father was the same. One day a strong man; the next crushed by adversity and robbed of his senses.”
“Did he never recover?”
Norma’s answer was a grim shake of the head.
Linnea digested that in silence. She’d known her father would offer her little help. To know he could offer her none, however, was bitter indeed. She sighed. “I hope my grandmother does not have to endure the journey to Romsey on horseback.”
“She travels in a horse litter. Milord Axton did order it so.”
Linnea paused on the steps and stared at Norma. A horse litter? Her husband had ordered a horse litter to make the journey easier for an old woman who did hate him and conspire against him? Not that he knew she conspired. But he did know she hated him. No one could mistake that. Even so, he’d ordered a horse litter for her.
The news of her father had depressed her, but this knowledge of Axton’s kindness unaccountably lifted her spirits. When Linnea entered the antechamber and he scowled at her and the several carpenters who headed into the bedchamber, she met his frown with a sincere smile.
“They will not be overlong, my lord. They do but repair the bed …” She trailed off. The bed they would very quickly retire to. She might have avoided an escapade in the bathtub with him, but she could not avoid him for very long.
He watched her as she approached with the pewter goblet that held her remedy. He sprawled back in the huge tub, his hair wet and slicked back, his shoulders bare and gleaming in the strengthening morning light. The water covered the lower half of his torso and all of his legs except the tops of his bent knees. But those portions of him that showed—the powerful chest and well-shaped arms—were enough to unnerve any woman alive. Even feeling as wretched as he must, he looked the perfect image of glorious manhood.
“What is in this vile brew?” he asked, sniffing suspiciously at the dark liquid she held out to him.
“Lavender, pennyroyal, and sweet woodruff,” she answered. “I will drink of it first if it please you.”
His hand closed around hers and lifted the chalice to his own lips. Cool metal and warm flesh cupped her hand and Linnea felt a frisson of heat. Against her thigh his chain of ruby and gold did seem to sear her skin.
“That’s not necessary,” Axton murmured. “Methinks you anticipate the reward too well to strike down he who would give it to you.” So saying, he drank deeply. But he kept his eyes locked upon her face.
For her part, Linnea wanted nothing more than to escape his smug confidence. She jerked her hand from his hold, sloshing a goodly portion of the infusion into the bathwater. The fact that he only chuckled riled her further.
“Do you deny the pleasure you find in our joining?” he asked, not the least concerned by the several servants and workmen who labored within the sound of his voice. “Answer me, wife. Your coyness is unnecessary now.”
“I would rather have this conversation in the great hall,” she snapped. “That way the entire populace of Maidenstone Castle can hear of what we speak. ’Tis what you want, is it not?”
His silent chuckles started a series of waves within the tub, soft, fragrant lapping that was at odds with the intensity of her feelings. “Never let it be said of me that I do not honor my ladywife’s delicate sensibilities. Come, my lovely little shrew. While the carpenters repair one part of what my temper has wrought, you can repair the other part.”
When she hesitated to approach him, unsure exactly what he meant, he extended a hand to her. “Do not fear. I shall harness my base nature and ask only that you scrub my skin while the carpenters labor.”
Linnea looked away from him. Why was she always so easily unsettled by him? How could she be one moment pleased by his thoughtfulness toward her grandmother, the next minute unnerved by his masculine beauty then, like lightning, outraged by his innuendo and unnerved all over again. It was perverse. She was perverse.
She swallowed hard and willed herself to a self-possession she did not truly feel. “As you wish,” she murmured, edging toward the tray of soaps and bathing cloths.
He did not move when she came up beside him. His eyes followed her, watching her with a burning gaze she felt even when she did not look at him. But his arms remained stretched along the sides of the tub and his head relaxed against the high back.
She dipped the cloths in the hot water and rubbed it with the castile soap her grandmother had purchased at the last fair at Chichester. Once she’d worked up a lather, however, it was time to actually scrub him. But how to begin? And where?
As if he knew her dilemma, Axton raised one foot out of the water. She began there.
His feet were large and well shaped. His ankles strong, and his calves muscular. As she soaped them, first one leg and then the other, she knew she scrubbed harder than necessary. But he did not rebuke her.
His hands and arms were next, long fingers, square palms, and well-formed arms, like hard, living steel. Under the touch of those clever hands of his she might forget everything but him.
“Shall I stand for the rest?”
Linnea dropped the cloth with a soggy plunk. Conversely some wanton part of her seemed to leap. “No. Not … not yet,” she managed to get out. She pulled her gaze away from his face, with its planes made sharper by the wet gleam of light on it, and stared instead at the soapy surface of the water. The washcloth was down there, somewhere near his hips, she suspected. And now she had to get it.
She closed her eyes and plunged her hand in. Slippery skin that was nonetheless hard and firm as the oaken beams that held up the roof rubbed against her hand. Coarse hair, then no hair. Her heart began to thud an almost painful rhythm. Then she felt the cloth, and her fingers clutched it as fiercely as if it were the Bacon of Flitch prize that she’d grabbed from a pike.
Before she could right herself, however, one of Axton’s hands caught her at the nape of her neck. “Come in here with me,” he whispered in a husky tone. “I would do to you what you have done to me.”
“I … I can bathe myself without aid of—”
“’Tis not the bathing I speak of,” he interrupted her. His other hand caught her wrist and drew it back down beneath the water, pressing it against the thickened arousal hidden beneath the fragrant suds.
Their eyes met and held, and Linnea knew he must see the way he affected her. She might protest with words and evasive actions. But when they were this close, when her fingers felt every inch of his desire and her eyes could not close away the answering desire she felt, she knew he recognized the truth. Time and circumstance might make of him her enemy, but there was a will in her that ignored everything but the way he made her feel.
She wanted to be in the tub with him. And he knew it.
“What of the bed linens, milady? Shall we change them—” At the sight of them, Norma halted in the doorway to the bedchamber. “Beg pardon, milord. I did not … um … that is …”
Linnea jerked her hand out with a splash that wet her skirt. The soggy washcloth dripped all over her shoes and the floor, but she was too dismayed to notice. Her cheeks had turned to scarlet and she wanted nothing more than to slink away in shame.
Axton, however, seemed entirely unperturbed. “Leave the bed linens as they are. And get those carpenters out of there now.”
“Yes, milord.” Norma backed away, bowing as she went. “They are nearly finished, milord. They’ll be gone at once.”
Linnea stared down at Axton. She should dread what was coming, but she could not. She could not.
Lord help me, she prayed. St. Jude. Mother Mary. Afraid to even think about what she was doing, she circled behind Axton. “Dunk your head,” she quietly ordered as she took up the soap once more. To her relief, he complied, and when he surfaced, she applied the soap to his head and began to scrub his raven black hair.
The carpenters were noisy as they approached the antechamber, as if to give fair warning of their presence. They were completely silen
t as they marched through, however. Norma was the last to leave. She hesitated a moment at the top of the stairs. But when Linnea shook her head, then turned her attention back to Axton, the older woman left too.
It was only Linnea and her husband now. Her husband who had been kind to her grandmother and in his own way, kind to her as well.
“Dunk again,” she told him. When he came up sputtering and wiping streams of water from his eyes, she had moved back a pace from the tub.
He raked his gleaming hair back from his brow and looked around for her. “Come here, wife.”
“I am removing my shoes, my lord.”
He watched as she pulled her skirt up and slipped first one, then the other shoe off. “Am I really your lord, then? Your esteemed lord and husband whom you do wish to please in every way?”
The chain burned against her thigh and she shifted restlessly from one bare foot to the other. “Yes.”
“Come here.”
Linnea edged a little nearer. “Shouldn’t I … well, remove my gown first?” she asked, fumbling with the ties at her wrists.
“No.” He sat up straighter and caught one of her hands, then pulled until she was off balanced and had to brace herself on the far edge of the bathtub.
“But how … I mean, the gown—”
“The gown is of no consequence, no consequence whatsoever,” he murmured, pulling her other wrist too. In a trice she tumbled over into the tub of frothy water, falling onto his chest with her legs flailing in the air.
Amidst her frantic efforts to right herself, she only sank more fully into the bathtub. Water sloshed over the edges, splashing across the floor as he pulled her down over him. His hands caught her around the waist and in less than the blink of an eye, she found herself straddling his hips, with her skirt floating around her waist, settling like a wet tent around them both.
“Ah. Much better,” Axton murmured, tugging her a little closer to him. “Now, my troublesome little wife, finish the task you have begun.”
It was preposterous and outrageous, but every part of Linnea that was a woman thrilled to it. The gown was a sodden hindrance. The tub was far too small for what he intended. But somehow they managed. He settled her over his impatient shaft and as if they were of one mind, they began the tandem rhythm, the offering and acceptance. The taking and giving.
“God, woman,” Axton groaned. His hands gripped her waist, digging into her skin, burning the chain he’d given her into her flesh. He drove her down on him, over and over, until Linnea felt the shuddering rush of it, the molten heat of it welling up. She cried out and tried to pull away, but he held her and forced her to more and more. Longer and stronger. Then he cried out too, a hoarse shout that was both a victory over her, and a surrender to her.
That fast was it over, and they collapsed into the much diminished bathwater. The side of Linnea’s face pressed into his wet shoulder. His arms circled her back and the appeased flesh of his manhood rested deeply within her.
In the quiet aftermath, when the only sound was their labored breathing, Linnea admitted to herself that this was not as she pictured marriage to be. She’d expected love and not thought at all about the physical part of it. She’d imagined a man who was gentle and kind, more a friend to her than anything else.
Instead, she’d wed a man she must fear and hate, and had discovered a physical joy she could neither understand nor explain. The fact that every least soul in the castle must know what she did with him and how she reveled in it only confounded things further.
Yet for all her mental debate, Linnea remained just as she was. She rested in Axton’s arms, limp from their lovemaking, and still wearing the drenched dress which would no doubt be discussed in whispers for days to come—or at least until he involved her in another such escapade.
God only knew what that might be, but Linnea would not deny that she could hardly wait to find out.
Axton watched his bride as she walked away.
The wench was truly amazing.
She was not at all what he would have expected. Not her beauty, nor her fire. Neither had he expected the powerful reaction he had to her whenever he saw her—or even thought about her.
He’d known he would have no difficulty responding to her vibrant beauty. Such a sweetly formed woman would heat any man’s blood. But the desire he felt for her burned with an intensity he was beginning to find disturbing. The plain truth was that he could not get enough of her.
He trailed behind her, down the stairs to the main hall, keeping his eyes on the rounded hips that swayed so enticingly beneath the softly draped gown she’d changed into. The woman was a temptress without even trying to be. At times she made him so angry—so angry that he wanted to throttle her.
He frowned to think how close he’d come to striking her last night, and all because she’d challenged him on account of her family. That she was loyal was commendable. But the fact was, he wanted to command that same level of loyalty from her. He wanted her world to center around him, not around her family. He wanted to create a new family with her.
It was a need he could never have foreseen.
At the foot of the stairs he halted and watched her walk away. Though it was foolish, he wanted her to look back. She knew he was here. So look back, he silently commanded her.
When she paused near the hearth and did just that, he couldn’t prevent the pleased smile that lifted his lips. She smiled back, a surprised half-smile that revealed more of her feelings for him than she probably knew. She was as confused by the unexpected attraction between them as he. That knowledge pleased him almost as much as anything else. She could not hide her feelings from him. A good trait in a wife. Though he would never have thought it possible between them, he found himself eager for honesty in their dealings together.
“What say you, brother?” Peter’s taunting voice interrupted Axton’s drifting thoughts. “The last I saw of you, you were not nearly so hale and hearty as this.”
Axton stifled a grimace. So Peter knew about last night. No doubt everyone did. Nevertheless, he shot the boy a tolerant smile, then returned his gaze to his wife.
The boy followed his gaze. “Talk is that you were not nearly so well pleased with her last night.”
Axton’s jaw tightened. His brother’s tone was not one of brotherly teasing; in truth, he sounded more angry than jovial. Axton turned to face Peter. “Last night I was drunk. Today I am sober.”
“I take it she has forgiven you.”
Axton frowned. “Not two days ago you despised Beatrix. Yet now I detect an air of protectiveness in you. I hope you do not imply that she needs be protected from her own husband.”
He glowered at his brother, daring him to push the matter any further. But with a mulish light in his eye and a belligerent set to his jaw, Peter pressed on. “If that husband would strike her, then destroy his own possessions when she is not completely submissive to him, then yes—”
“I did not hurt her!”
“But you would have!” Peter hissed. “Had Reynold not prevented it, you would have struck her down. Had she not hidden, you would have trapped her in your chambers and punished her last night.”
“My wife is mine own affair.” Axton bit the words out, cold and clipped. When Peter did not flinch, however, his fury grew even greater. “’Tis a man’s right to discipline his wife. ’Tis his duty. To cuff her when she has erred is no great sin.”
“I never once saw our father strike Mother.”
Axton could not believe his ears. It was not his brother’s words that were so shocking. Axton knew as well as Peter—better even—that their father had never raised a hand to their mother. He had honored her and respected her and loved her. What Axton could not believe was that Peter would bring up such a thing to him, when the circumstances of his marriage were so vastly different from their parents’. He’d wed his enemy’s daughter, not his childhood sweetheart. And the fact remained that he had not actually struck the troublesome wench!
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nbsp; “Your concern is touching, little brother. But Beatrix is my wife and I will deal with her as I see fit. You have only to look at her to see she is well pleased with the role fate has given her.”
“Is she?” Peter asked, giving him a cold smile. “Or is she simply playing the role she believes will keep her safe?”
“Damn you! That is not the way of it. If you value your place here, you will leave this matter alone!”
Under Axton’s blistering glare Peter finally looked away, across the hall to the paired oaken doors through which Beatrix had departed. “I assume she goes to bid her grandmother farewell.”
Axton felt a modicum of satisfaction that his brother had decided to let the subject go—and a considerable relief. Despite his defense of his actions last night, Axton was uncomfortable with Peter’s accusation. He had overreacted. To himself, at least, he would not deny it. But that was over and done with. He would not allow himself to be so provoked again. He answered Peter, “The crone’s departure is for the best.”
“What of Sir Edgar and his injured son?”
Axton sighed. His new wife’s family was a wearisome burden. Most of his life he’d lived hating them and wanting revenge against them. Now he only wanted them to go away. “Henry comes soon. Once he has dispensed his justice, we shall be relieved of the de Valcourt family once and for all. Peace and prosperity will finally be ours and you will not have to worry over my treatment of my wife.”
“Your wife is a de Valcourt. That you can so easily forget that fact surprises me.”
“In that you are wrong, brother. She is no longer a de Valcourt, not from the moment of her wedding oath. She is a de la Manse, now. Beatrix de la Manse. My wife and lady of Maidenstone. You need not doubt her loyalty to me, nor mine to her.”
Then spying Sir Maurice, Axton gave his brother a curt nod, turned, and departed. But Peter’s words left him with an uneasy feeling. He had embarked on his marriage to de Valcourt’s daughter, intending to bind her to him on the strength of her passionate nature. He’d behaved like an idiot last night—he could admit that much to himself. But he’d mended that this morning. That Beatrix had been so willing to forget about last night had only assured him that he was succeeding with his plan to gain her loyalty—all her loyalty.
The Maiden Bride Page 18
