Lords of Conquest Boxed Set

by Patricia Ryan

  “Excellent.” Sweets were a staple at Lord Gui’s table, and Graeham missed them. As Joanna cleared the table, he said, “It surprises me to hear you speak of demands. I was under the impression you and Hugh came from quite a privileged background.”

  “It was...well, certainly it was privileged in many ways. Wexford is a grand castle—”

  “Castle.”

  She unwrapped the two little tarts, served one to each of them and took her seat. “Our father is William of Wexford. He’s a very great knight with a vast holding half a day’s ride to the south. Our lady mother died of childbed fever after I was born, but Lord William is still living.”

  “Is Hugh heir to his lands?”

  “We won’t know that until Father dies. He holds Wexford for his overlord—who may or may not choose to grant it to Hugh when the time comes.” She took a bite of her tart, and Graeham followed suit; it was sinfully good.

  “Doesn’t it nettle him,” Graeham asked, “not knowing whether such an important holding is to be his?”

  “I’m not certain he even wants it. His recollections of Wexford, like mine, are...not pleasant, by and large. Our sire is a man very sure of what he wants and how to get it. The day Hugh turned four, Father handed him over for military training to his master at arms—a monster by the name of Regnaud. Father’s goal was to mold Hugh into the most celebrated knight in Christendom—a distinction that would reflect glory upon himself, of course. And...well, he felt a boy needed discipline if he was to be a great soldier, and he gave Regnaud a free hand with the whip. ‘Twasn’t much of a childhood for Hugh.”

  “And you,” Graeham said, frowning, “were you...disciplined?”

  “Not with the whip.” She broke off a bit of the tart’s crust and nibbled it. Without looking up, she said, “Father would have me brought to him for beatings when I displeased him. He’d have Hugh locked up in the cellar so he couldn’t interfere.” She drew in a breath, still avoiding his gaze. “I’m afraid I often chafed at his notion of ladylike behavior. I’d go exploring in the woods when his clerics were expecting me for lessons—that sort of thing.”

  Graeham found himself asking, “How badly did he beat you?”

  She raised her eyes to his. “You’re interrogating me again.”

  “I’d like to know,” he said softly.

  Her throat moved. “He never struck me on the face. He didn’t want to mar my appearance, because he planned to advance himself by marrying me off to a son of Baron Gilbert de Montfichet.”

  “You were betrothed to a son of Lord Gilbert?” he asked incredulously. Gilbert de Montfichet and his cousin, Walter fitz Robert fitz Richard, held the only true baronies within the city of London. Their castles, Montfichet and Baynard, tucked right up next to each other against the westernmost stretch of city wall, were the only fortressed dwellings in London aside from the Tower. As the city’s only true barons, Lord Gilbert and Lord Walter were its most powerful citizens, wielding considerable influence with the king.

  “The younger son,” Joanna said. “He has two—had two. His older son, Geoffrey, died of measles about two years ago. Nicholas was the second son. I wasn’t officially betrothed to him. But when I was eleven, Father sent me to London to serve the baron’s wife, Lady Fayette, at Montfichet Castle. It was understood that a marriage to Nicholas would be negotiated if I was found suitable. Of course, I bristled at being a pawn for father’s advancement, but I was happy to be away from Wexford. And to be in London!”

  Joanna broke off another, larger, piece of the tart and ate it. Finding her fingertips coated with custard, she slid them one by one between her lips to suck them clean. A surge of arousal ambushed Graeham.

  “You like London?” he asked, trying to ignore the small, pink tip of her tongue as it darted out to sweep a drop of custard from her lower lip.

  “I did then. It was so big and grand, and everyone seemed so sophisticated. And I liked Lady Fayette. ‘Twas she who taught me to embroider.”

  “She should be commended. You’re very gifted at it.”

  Joanna smiled shyly. “Thank you.”

  Graeham finished his tart. “Why didn’t you marry the baron’s son? Did his parents reject you?”

  “Nay, they seemed to adore me. And Nicholas was willing. ‘Twas I who balked. The betrothal contract was drawn up when I was fourteen, but I just...couldn’t consent to it. I stalled for almost a year, puzzling how to get out of it.”

  “Did you despise Nicholas that much?”

  “In truth, I liked him. And he seemed to like me—to a point. Nicholas was one of those men who...prefer the charms of their own sex.”

  “Ah.”

  “Everyone knew it.” She took a deep breath. “And I’m afraid I just couldn’t reconcile myself to such a union. But at the same time, I dreaded being made to return to Wexford should I refuse it outright. My sire...he threatened to beat me to death if I was sent back home.”

  Graeham had lifted his wine cup; he lowered it. “Would he have done it, do you think?”

  “‘Twas possible—he had an ungovernable temper. There was pressure from all fronts for me to acquiesce. I felt all adrift. I had no one to counsel me, no one to turn to.”

  “What of Hugh?”

  “Oh, he’d turned mercenary as soon as he was knighted, at eighteen. ‘Twas around the time I was sent to London. He told me he knew I didn’t need him there anymore, for protection, because I’d be away from our sire. And he would have gone mad if he’d tried to remain at Wexford, under the thumb of our father.”

  “So, you were fifteen, and alone, and distressed...”

  “Terrified,” she corrected.

  He nodded. “Is that when you met your husband?” How else could she have gotten out of such a fix?

  She looked down and fiddled with her half-eaten tart. “Prewitt came to Montfichet Castle to show some silks to Lady Fayette. I was...instantly smitten. He was older, urbane, and he dressed like a gentleman. He wooed me in secret.” She shrugged. “We were married within a fortnight.”

  “That can’t have pleased your sire.”

  “It didn’t. He banished me from Wexford. I haven’t seen him in six years.”

  “A pity.”

  “No, it’s not. I’d be happy never to lay eyes on the man again.”

  “Ah, we come back to happiness.” Graeham leaned forward on his elbows and captured Joanna’s gaze. “Are you going to tell me whether you’re happy?”

  She rolled her eyes and began collecting bowls and cups and bits of tart. “I’m going to take our supper dishes out to the kitchen and wash them. And then I...I have some things to do.”

  “More embroidery?”

  She nodded without looking at him.

  “You’ll go blind, doing work like that at night.”

  “I’ll go out of business if I don’t.”

  “But surely your husband will return soon with more silks to sell. And in the meantime, you’ve got my four shillings to keep you going. You shouldn’t work yourself so hard.”

  She rose and carried the ewer of wine to a crude cupboard fashioned of planks on posts. “‘Tis a difficult habit to break.”

  Graeham felt a tugging on his splint and looked down to find Petronilla sharpening her claws on it. He swatted her away, whereupon she settled down just out of reach, watching him with what looked like amused contempt.

  “Cats make no sense to me,” he said. “Meaning no disrespect, mistress, but I can’t fathom why anyone would bother keeping one as a chamber animal.”

  Retrieving a tray from the cupboard, Joanna returned to the table and began piling their dishes on it. “You’re not afraid of them, are you?”

  “Afraid of them!”

  “Some people are.”

  “I don’t fear them—it’s just that I’d rather have the company of a nice, agreeable dog. Cats are selfish, calculating beasts, useless save for mousing.”

  “Manfrid never catches anything, but Petronilla is quite the fine m
ouser. She eats spiders, too. You’ll never find anything scuttling about in these rushes.”

  He drained the last of his wine and handed her the empty cup. “At least she serves some purpose, then. But her brother is too nervous and timid to be of any use, as far as I can tell. ‘Tis a mystery to me why you keep him.”

  “He’s not shy with me—although he was in the beginning. It’s men he’s truly frightened of. I think some man must have mistreated him when he was a kitten, before I got him. He’s happy when it’s just me here. He likes to sit on my lap when there’s no one else about.”

  “Dogs can warm laps, too, and they can also be trained. They can fetch things for you, flush out small game...”

  “Manfrid doesn’t exist to serve me,” she said, a bit testily. “He just exists. I like him for what he is—a big, sweet, shy tomcat. Does he have to be of some use to me for me to want him about?”

  “To my way of thinking, yes.”

  “Perhaps,” she said coolly as she carried the trayful of dishes toward the back door, “that’s where you and I are fundamentally different.” At the entrance to the hallway, she turned and asked, “Will you be needing anything else before you retire for the evening, serjant?”

  “Nay, there’s nothing I need.” He rose awkwardly and reached for his crutch, leaning against the bench. “Good night, mistress.”

  “Good night.”

  * * *

  Graeham awoke to the muffled thump of the back door closing. He lay still in the dark, his ears tuned to the sound of soft footfalls in the hallway next to the storeroom. Someone was entering the house.

  An intruder? Perhaps. Whoever it was clearly was endeavoring to make as little noise as possible.

  Joanna’s upstairs. And Graeham was all but completely crippled. Could he defend her if he had to?

  He sat up, heart hammering, and used both hands to lower his splinted leg off the bed. Pulling himself up with his crutch, he grabbed the big knife he’d appropriated from the cur who’d lured him into the alley last week, the one who’d called himself Byram. And if the knife was taken from him, there was that axe Joanna kept tucked away in the salle for protection, the one she’d threatened him with that first night.

  As Graeham hobbled slowly to the leather curtain, a thought occurred to him. Perhaps the intruder was Prewitt Chapman, home from his latest sojourn. How would the silk merchant react, he wondered, upon finding a crippled, half-naked stranger—for Graeham slept in naught but his underdrawers—accosting him with a knife in his own home in the middle of the night?

  How late was it, anyway? He remembered hearing the bells of curfew as he was readying himself for bed, and then he’d fallen asleep. Prewitt couldn’t have gained entrance through the city gates after curfew, so it probably wasn’t him.

  Striving for silence, he parted the leather curtain, just slightly, with the tip of the knife, and peered into the candlelit salle. His breath caught in his throat.

  Joanna, standing in profile to him, her single braid draped over one shoulder, was shimmying out of her unlaced brown kirtle. It pooled on the rush-covered floor, leaving her in her undershift of thin, worn linen, which was sleeveless and came only to her knees; her legs, exquisitely shapely, were encased in black stockings.

  The drawstring that gathered the shift’s neckline, he saw, was still untied. When she bent over to pick up the kirtle, it slid down one shoulder and fell open, baring a softly gleaming breast for the interval of a heartbeat.

  Graeham’s hands twitched; desire settled heavy in his loins.

  She was preparing for a bath, he saw. The table had been dismantled, its top leaning against the wall while the round base had been overturned to form a bathtub. Next to it sat two steaming buckets. The benches that normally flanked the table still stood to either side of the tub. Joanna’s white silken wrapper, a towel, a dish of soap, a large ivory comb and a small vial lay on one of them.

  She draped her kirtle over the other bench, next to her girdle and veil, then sat and kicked off her slippers.

  Graeham knew he shouldn’t watch her unawares. It was dishonorable. There was no excuse for it. He would close the curtain and turn around.

  Soon.

  Raising her shift to mid-thigh, she slid the garter off and set it aside, then began rolling the stocking down over her knee and calf. The hosiery gleamed with silken luster in the flickering candlelight. There was something oddly touching about this humbly clad woman with her luxurious silken hose and wrappers that only she ever saw—and of course her husband, when he deigned to come home for a visit.

  Close the curtain, you pathetic bastard. Yet he could not wrest his gaze from her as she slowly peeled off first one stocking, then the other. The shift slipped off both shoulders as she leaned forward to work the snug hose over her feet, exposing the satiny upper slopes of her breasts almost to the nipples. Her legs parted for a fleeting moment; the black shadow at the juncture of her thighs appeared and vanished in a blink.

  Graeham closed his eyes, clenched his jaw.

  When he looked again, she was on her feet, lifting one of the buckets with both hands, her arms quivering with strain as she poured the hot water into the tub. By the liquid splashing, he could tell there was already water in there—probably cold water from the well that she was heating up with water she’d boiled in the kitchen. She poured in the second bucket, then unstoppered the vial and carefully added two drops of its contents—a thick oil—to her bathwater.

  Leaning over the tub, she swirled the water with one hand while holding the other pressed to her chest to keep the shift from slipping down. She closed her eyes and smiled as the fragrant steam rose around her. Graeham inhaled as the flowery scent wafted toward him, and he smiled, too; so this was how she managed to smell like a wild, rain-washed meadow in the middle of London.

  Graeham didn’t think he’d ever seen anything more captivatingly sensual than Joanna Chapman at this moment—her eyes closed, her smile one of dreamy anticipation. She straightened, her smile fading, her gaze unfocused as she contemplated the steaming water. She stood absolutely still, her hand still resting on her upper chest, for so long that Graeham wondered what she could be thinking to absorb her so.

  Gradually her hand drifted downward over the curve of a breast, her fingers lightly shaping its roundness through the flimsy linen of her shift. Absently, as if she were mesmerized, she stroked her thumb across the nipple, which stiffened.

  Graeham stood rooted to the spot, his heart pumping painfully in his chest, heat flooding his loins as he grew erect.

  Joanna’s dreamlike countenance never altered as she skimmed her hand downward, over her stomach to her lower belly. Her eyes drifted closed as her hand came to rest between her legs. She didn’t caress herself, merely stood in heated silence, lost in thought.

  When she opened her eyes, Graeham was unnerved to find them glimmering wetly. Her expression suddenly troubled, she whispered something that sounded like “Fool.”

  She swiped her hands over her eyes, then swiftly untied her braid and unwove the plaits. Standing with her back to Graeham, she combed through her rippling dark gold hair until it hung in a luxuriant sheet nearly as long as her shift. Tossing the comb onto the bench, she shrugged out of her loosened shift, which fell in a puddle of linen at her feet.

  She was naked now, entirely naked, although the silken blanket of her hair concealed all but her legs from view. Graeham closed the curtain with a sigh of disgust at himself. Only a week ago he’d promised Hugh he wouldn’t compromise his sister, and already he’d spied on her toilette, like some callow youth who’d never seen a woman in his life—a callow youth of base character, for only the lowest churls peeked at women while they undressed.

  Graeham had always prided himself on his soldierly sense of honor. But abstinence, as Hugh had pointed out, tended to rob a man of his scruples. How could any normal man live in the same house with a woman like Joanna and not become tempted?

  Graeham limped back to the l
ittle cot and sat, carefully so as not to rustle the straw in the mattress and call attention to himself; God forbid Joanna should discover that he’d been peering at her through a gap in the curtain! He grimaced as he lay on his back, his broken ribs and leg grousing about all this activity in the middle of the night.

  Straining, he could just make out the hushed liquid sounds of Joanna bathing—soft trickles, little splashes. He pictured her reclining in the perfumed steam, naked but for wet tendrils of hair clinging to her like golden snakes, gliding her soap-slicked hands down her chest, over her breasts, and lower...

  “By the Rood,” he whispered into the darkness as he felt himself grow harder still, “I’ll never make it two months.”

  He took a deep, calming breath and closed his eyes, commanding himself to sleep...but all he could see was Joanna, her head thrown back on the edge of the tub, arched and trembling as she gave herself the pleasure her husband wasn’t here to give her. Did she touch herself that way? he wondered. It excited him to think of a woman pleasuring herself. Once, in Paris, he’d even talked a pretty little whore into bringing herself to climax while he watched; it had cost him half a sou.

  But as arousing as it was to imagine a woman gratifying herself, Graeham could not bring himself to ease his own lust, no matter how frustrated he became. Partly it was because of all those ceaseless lectures by the brothers at Holy Trinity about the sin of self-abuse. But mostly it was simply that he’d slept in dormitories his entire life; if threats of hellfire won’t teach a man to sublimate his sexual hunger, lack of privacy generally will. In the past, Graeham had found tourneys and sport fighting useful in diminishing his physical passions—when no accommodating woman was available, of course. But such exercise was off limits to him for quite some time.