LordoftheKeep

by Ann Lawrence

  Emma shook her off. She retrieved her shuttle and set to work. The words her friend had spoken merely reinforced her own conviction that to give in to her desires for the lord of the keep was folly. She had made her vows.

  Desire him she might, have him, she could not.

  Chapter Eight

  To shake off his dire mood, Gilles threw himself into the restoration of his castle wall. For the next few weeks, he labored alongside his men, drove them and himself to exhaustion. Each night, when he returned spent and the younger men rallied and turned to wenching or dice, he was reminded most sorely of his age. His rewards were few, physical or mental. At the end of one particularly fruitless day of labor, he entered his chamber, wet and filthy.

  He turned on Roland who’d followed him there. “This damnable sandy soil! It will not surprise me should we wake on the morrow to find we’ve sunk into the sea itself. Are we built on a bed of quicksand? And why is this winter so capricious? Yesterday, bitter cold, today as warm as spring.”

  “Did the men determine what caused this latest slide?” Roland asked, settling himself at Gilles’ table.

  “Aye. ‘Twas merely shoddy work done decades ago. Poor excavation, impatient building. ‘Tis a bloody waste and naught to be done about it. God’s holy blood, when will this damnable rain end?” Gilles stripped off his sopping wet clothes. He tested the water of the tub that stood steaming by the hearth, and then sank into its soothing depths. He closed his eyes on the memory of the flattened skull he’d seen when he’d helped lift some fallen rocks. As several weeks had passed since the man’s death, there was no blood to be seen, but the sharp shards of bone had turned his stomach. The youth of the dead man saddened his heart.

  “Why, Roland, is one man chosen and another passed over?” He did not wait for his friend’s reply. “Like myself? I stand at the end of life’s road burying dead men who should have one foot at the start.”

  “I have no answer, my friend.”

  When Gilles heard Hubert gathering the filthy clothes, he opened his eyes. “Bring me plain bread and some of that Rhenish wine.” Hubert hurried to his duties, and Gilles scrubbed his hair and body of the mud and memories. When he had rinsed clean, he turned to look at his friend. “You are not here to scrub my back. What do you want?”

  Roland d’Vare rose and strode to the hearth. He traced the painted designs that bordered the chimneypiece with his fingertips. “My Sarah plagues me. I fear for my manhood should I try to bed her in her present mood.”

  Gilles grinned up at his friend. Roland and he were friends from childhood, when Roland had been a page to Gilles’ father. “What ails the termagant now? She seemed amiable enough this morning.” Gilles closed his eyes and rested his head back on the tub edge.

  “William Belfour.” Roland had no need to say much more. “He oversteps himself. He is causing a furor among the spinners and weavers.”

  “Weavers!” Gilles sat up. “How so?”

  “Constantly about. Pestering one and all. Nearly had my Sarah spitting blood.”

  “Jesu.” Gilles surged from the tub.

  “You’ll have need of your skin on the morrow,” Roland remarked as he watched Gilles dry himself.

  “Speak plainly. I am sure Sarah can handle William’s arrogance. She certainly handles mine!” Gilles swept up a flowing robe from the bed. The embroidery that edged the sleeves and front was as black as the silk it graced. It had been a gift from old King Henry. Roland jested often that it made Gilles look like the very devil himself.

  He tied the robe closed with the blue-green cloth belt made by Emma’s hand, then flung himself into a chair by the hearth. The contrast of the cold silk and the searing heat of the fire made him shiver. He idly stroked the belt.

  “Sarah would have me speak plainly. You may hide your interest from others, but not from us.” Roland drew a second chair to the hearth. “Claim the wench before William does.”

  The two men stared at each other. Gilles did not need to hear more. “I see.” Gilles stretched his feet closer to the heat of the flames, rested his elbows on the wide oak arms of his chair, and steepled his fingers. “So…William plays his usual games of seduction.”

  “Aye, ‘tis a shame you may not speak more plainly to William,” Roland said into the silence.

  “Nay.” Gilles leapt to his feet. “Spare me the old arguments.”

  “If William knew he was your bastard, he would be less likely to trespass where your interests lie.”

  Gilles paced before the fire in agitated silence. Roland’s words simmered and steeped in his mind. Finally, he halted. Legs spread, arms crossed on his chest, he faced his friend. “I will speak to William as lord to vassal and he will listen and obey.”

  “If you say so.” Roland looked skeptical and sighed.

  “Jesu. I have kept his parentage from him for these twenty-odd years. I’ll not speak now. He will have coin enough when his mother dies. I settled a fortune on her to take herself from this keep and never return.”

  “Aye, she could not help but kiss your hem when she saw what a few times in the hayloft had earned her.”

  “Damnation, Roland, I could not shame my wife. What a callow youth I was to bed the wench when Margaret was swollen with child. Jesu, Nicholas was but six months old when William was born. I did what I thought was best.”

  “Don’t flail yourself so. William’s mother was beyond beautiful, and Margaret stirred your lust no more as a virgin bride than when she was great with child. No one would blame you for taking your pleasure with a beauty such as Alice Gray.”

  “I blame me. I’ve been ensnared with William’s mother in one way or another since first she lifted her skirts. I’ve provided well for her, found her a worthy husband, and truthfully, who’s to say that William is even mine? Yet I took her word for it at the time. He has not the look of me, but it matters not.

  “We have this same discussion once a year. I will not change my mind. William’s mother agreed to her silence, and I have agreed to her keep. I have fostered William, made a knight of him, trained him well. Spared him bastardy. It is enough.”

  They fell silent as Hubert entered and set a tray of bread and wine on the table.

  “We have wandered far from our path,” Roland said when the youth had gone. He poured wine for himself and Gilles. “Sarah thinks William will soon tire of May. Should he turn to Emma…well, the maid has not the nature of a leman. Marry the wench.”

  “Again, I have no wish to wed.” Gilles stared down his friend.

  Roland sipped his wine and smiled.

  “Marry. Mon Dieu. I’ve neither the inclination nor the need to wed. Especially a woman half my age. And what has she to increase my wealth or power? What could she bring me? Her spindle?”

  “And what of love?” Roland asked.

  “Love is a jongleur’s game. We speak here of lust, nothing else.” Gilles could not tell Roland that Emma considered herself pledged, out of reach. He personally thought little of words spoken in bed; they meant only that the heat of the moment had addled one’s brain, but Emma may take some time to come to that same conclusion. She was very young, her abandonment new—and there would always be the child who would be naught but a bastard if Emma denied her vows.

  A thought, more painful than any yet considered, swept through him—mayhap Emma still loved the man who denied her. Nay, she had stated to him she no longer believed in love. But what woman did not believe in love?

  “A woman that young will find an equally young lover if you don’t take a step to prevent it, Gilles. She may seem uncommonly innocent, and more gently born than her circumstances, yet Sarah thinks—”

  “Enough.” Gilles thumped his fist on the armrest. Innocent and possibly still in love, and yet…alone.

  It was Emma’s gentle and ladylike manner that kept him from speaking to her—and her youth. How young she had looked as she’d spoken of her vows. Too young to know that little said in passion lasted beyond the spasms of ph
ysical satiation.

  Yet, here he was, lying awake each night, thinking of her like some besotted page. He conjured her face, the sound of her voice. He imagined he could scent her, taste her. The last few weeks had been a torture.

  “I’ll tell Sarah I did my best.” Roland sighed. He rose and drained his cup. “She’ll plague me to death one day.”

  “Roland,” Gilles said. Roland stopped at the door, his hand on the latch. “I will claim Emma. She will come to me—vows or not.”

  When Roland was gone, Gilles began to pace. He was a turmoil of anxiety within. For all his commanding words, he did not know how to approach Emma after their last conversation.

  Roland’s remarks about William had touched a raw nerve. How could he expect Emma to resist a man such as William? No woman whom William decided to pursue, be she highborn or low, resisted him for very long. He must assume William visited the weavers for May—whose thighs his son had ridden a score of times.

  Flinging back the door to his chamber, Gilles sought the wall-walk. He must put his claim on Emma before William’s attentions to May began to wane.

  The rain had stopped, though the wind still whined wildly around the stones. He barely heeded the cold, slick wood beneath his bare feet as he turned his face to the wind, breathed in the scent of damp, mossy stone, and wished fervently for what he could not have—that she would come to him.

  For he could not go to her.

  * * * * *

  Emma set her hand loom on the table and lifted Angelique from the basket at her feet. She walked slowly to the long room housing the spinners. There, she moved quietly to the last pallet and the woman who sat there cross-legged, mending a worn shift.

  “May, would you consent to watch Angelique? I’d like to see if I might be useful in the hall. I cannot sleep.”

  “Oh, aye, but this is becoming a habit. You will become ill if you don’t have some rest.” May tucked the sleeping babe against her, smoothed the curly hair, and looked up at Emma. “Go now. She will be safe here with me—as long as need be.”

  Emma thanked her and left her child in May’s capable arms. Bleakly, she realized that since her milk had failed, Angelique seemed just as content with May who played and jested, as with her mother who toiled every hour of every day. She worked to fight temptation.

  Her heart beat in her throat. She did not look to the left or right as she climbed the steep stairs to the hall door. The sentry there opened for her without challenge.

  Restless, Emma wandered the hall, stepping quietly by the men and women wrapped in blankets and sleeping on rows of pallets. A small boy she recognized from the village caught her eye, a boy whose parents had died the previous spring and whom Emma suspected existed through thievery. He crouched by a knot of men who sat by the fire, talking softly among themselves.

  “Robert?” The boy turned and stared up at her. He had deep brown eyes that were dark holes in his thin, nearly starved looking face. “Come, find a pallet. Rest.”

  He ignored her, flapping a hand at her as if she were a burdensome fly, turning once more to the men. A burning look of concentration was on his face. She dropped at his side and followed his gaze. A massive man with arms like tree trunks was holding forth on some matter. The armorer—Big Robbie. “He is a kindly man,” she whispered to the boy.

  “Who cares of kindness. He makes the best swords in all of Christendom.” The boy duckwalked a bit closer to the group.

  Emma smiled. “In all of Christendom! Well, well.” With a smile, she rose and shook out her skirts. The boy barely subsisted in the village. How little of joy must he have in his life. She would not take this small time of hero worship from him. Thoughts of another man, another who could be called heroic, entered her mind.

  As she moved about the hall, she realized there was little to do save join the beggarly eavesdropper. The fatigue of the busy weeks had taken its toll on young and old. Yet she could not return to her bed. Her eyes searched feverishly for the sight of him. He was not in the hall.

  She paced up and down the aisle of the chapel. Finally, she found herself at the foot of the stone stairway to the castle tower.

  He slept above. He was from another world. He wanted a leman. He needed her. Whenever their eyes met, she saw it there, as tangible as the need she felt within herself.

  Inexorably drawn, her mind in a turmoil, Emma mounted the stairs. Her heart warred with good sense. She passed his chamber door on soft footsteps, lest she disturb him, and continued on to the arched opening of the wall-walk to seek the night air and its cleansing peace. How could she banish this wild ache she felt for him?

  He merged with the black night, but she instantly knew he was there. Had she known all along? Had some intangible thread between them brought her here to this place at just this moment?

  Even if she had wished it, she could not have stilled her progress toward where he stood. His hair lifted and blew about his shoulders like part of the dark night as his robe billowed and swirled about his body. Emma halted beside him.

  Gilles turned and saw her. His chest felt suddenly tight. A need for her burned low in his belly. He raked his hair back from his face with his hands, then extended them to her.

  Her hands were very strong, and he measured their strength as she entwined her fingers silently with his. Staring at her, oblivious to the whip of the wind or the beads of moisture that collected on his skin from the light mist, he drew her hands to his mouth and caressed her palms with his lips, breathing his warmth on her. He stepped closer and watched her as he gently held her fingers to his mouth. All the words he could not speak crowded in his throat.

  It was she who broke the silence. “I tried to stay away.”

  Her words were whispered. Sorrowful. They raised an ache in his heart. He understood. He, too, had tried to put her from his mind. “You will never be sorry.” He kissed the backs of her hands, first the right, then the left.

  Slowly, she turned hers, covering his in turn, and traced the scar across his fingers. She visited the pads of calluses on him palms from years of wielding a sword. He lifted her hands and placed them on the edges of his robe. He felt the heat of her fingertips as she discovered the intricate stitches that edged the silk. His heart pounded like a warhorse’s racing to battle. He drew the edges open wider, bared his chest, placed her hands on his skin. When her fingers moved to explore the shape of him just as she had traced the embroidery, the pleasure of simple arousal gave way to a fiery need. A look of innocent wonder crossed her face.

  His eyes never left her as he watched her expressive face—so sweet, so gentle. Her hands spread over the shape of him, sought and found his tight nipples in the hair on his chest. A groan escaped him when she used the pads of her thumbs to stroke him in gentle circles.

  His nipples were on fire, the pleasure bordering on pain. He encircled her wrists, held her loosely, and guided her hands downward, then abruptly released her before he made a mistake and took her beyond where she wished to go on her own.

  Emma could barely breathe. She raised her eyes to his black ones, the same black ones that had beguiled and taken possession of her soul—drawn her to him with an inevitability she could no longer fight. She read the need in his eyes.

  The wind blew his hair and hers, mixing the gold with the black, entwining the strands like lovers embracing. Her hands, with a will of their own, went to the belt of his robe, the one she had made in the colors of the sea.

  “I could not let another have it,” he said as she touched the design on the belt with her fingertips.

  He guided her hands to the knot. Together, her fingers trembling beneath his, they loosed the knot. He let her hands go.

  “I made it for you,” she whispered.

  She set him free.

  The wind took the edges of the fine silk and blew it back from his body like the huge wings of a hawk.

  Stunned at the madness that suddenly swept through her, she gripped the belt to anchor herself. He was naked to her e
yes. Her first glimpse of a man fully naked. She drank in the look of him, like a pagan god, strongly muscled, black hair dark on his chest and thighs. His legs were spread and he stood braced against the elements, exposed to whatever would come.

  She could have stared at him forever. Despite the chill wind, her cheeks burned at the thoughts and desires that swirled through her. She wanted to lay her hands to him, lay her mouth to him, tell him every thought that was within her. She stood in silence, clutched the belt.

  Gilles had never felt so naked—or so gloriously alive and free. He relished the feel of the mist beading on the hair of his body, relished the way she stroked and caressed him with her eyes. ‘Twas a powerful thing, her looking—a looking that touched him everywhere as tangibly as the silk swept and flew about his sides.

  Every fiber of his body had strung itself taut from the first moment when he’d held her in his arms. She was the weaver that could make whole cloth of his desires. He wanted her to touch him and somehow make real what had hitherto been but a wild wish in his imagination.

  He took her hand and pulled the belt from her fist. He pressed her hand to his lips, then with jerky motions, clumsy in his need, he pressed her hand to his chest. “You are mine,” he whispered, his voice hoarse on his words.

  “Aye.” Her hand spread to cover his heart.

  How his heart pounded against her palm. How her own heart’s beat rose to meet his. Soon their hearts beat as one rhythm, hard and fast, inflamed and urgent.

  He could not bear it, closed his eyes, and lifted his arms—braced his hands between the stone walls to his right and left. He could not look at her…not when she used the misty beads of moisture gathered on his skin to slick her way along the ridges and valleys of his chest…not when she pushed the silk from his shoulders to savor the warrior strength that lay in wait in the stretched muscles and taut tendons…not when she swept her wet fingers over his nipples to tease his heart’s beat from rapid to racing.