Lords of Conquest Boxed Set

by Patricia Ryan

  Raising her skirt, he levered her thighs open and reached between them to untie his drawers.

  Her heart thudded painfully in her chest. This was all happening so fast; she felt as if she’d been caught in a raging tempest with no place to take shelter.

  She gasped when she felt something hard and warm prod the soft flesh of her inner thigh. It felt unnervingly large, a hot column of satin-smooth steel, its tip slickly damp; she hadn’t expected that.

  Scooping his hands beneath her bottom to lift her, he reared over her, positioning himself.

  This will hurt.

  “Hugh, wait,” she pleaded, clutching at his shirt.

  “I can’t wait.” He flexed his hips, nudging her open with the tip of his sex.

  “We need to talk.”

  “Afterward.” The cords in his neck bulging with strain as he prepared to drive himself into her.

  “Hugh, just...not so fast.”

  “Why? What’s the matter?” He trembled as he arched over her, his hair hanging down, his face darkly flushed.

  “It’s my first time.”

  “What?”

  “It’s...it’s my first time, and I thought if you could slow down a bit, it wouldn’t be so—”

  “Your first time?” He looked at her as if she were mad. “You can’t be serious. Do you mean our first time?”

  “I’m...a virgin, Hugh. I am.”

  He stared at her in absolute astonishment, then closed his eyes and swore softly under his breath.

  “Hugh...I was going to tell you, but it all happened so—”

  “I should have known.” Pushing himself off her, he turned his back to her as he retied his drawers. “I did know.”

  “Hugh?” Sitting up, Phillipa smoothed her skirt back over her legs. “I didn’t mean we couldn’t...” She laid a tentative hand on his shoulder. “I just meant perhaps you could take things a bit more slowly.”

  “I certainly would have,” he said, turning to face her, “if I’d known. Why on earth do you let people think you’re...” He shook his head. “Why?”

  Averting her gaze, she wrapped her arms around her upraised knees. “‘Twas the best way to make myself seem unsuitable for marriage.”

  “Unsuitable...of course.” From the corner of her eye, she saw him rub the back of his neck. “It makes a certain preposterous sense. But...you’ve been seen bringing men into your home. And they talk about you, the men you’ve...the men you’re supposed to have...been with. They brag of having bedded you.”

  She lifted her shoulders. “I’ve invited other scholars into my home if we were engaged in a particularly interesting conversation and I didn’t want it to end. If some of them misrepresented the visit afterward, well...men are known to lie about such things.”

  “And you welcomed those lies because they bolstered your image as an intellectual libertine.” He raked his hair off his face with both hands. “It doesn’t make sense, though. If you were so determined to have a tarnished reputation, why didn’t you just—” he shrugged “—tarnish it fair and square? One may as well be wanton if it’s what everyone is going to think anyway.”

  “The truth is, I never really wanted to...do the things that would earn that sort of reputation.” She stole an uneasy glance at him. “Perhaps if I’d ever been in love, but...”

  “Ah, love.” With a wry grin, he said, “The reason you’ve never been struck by Cupid’s arrow, my lady, is that his quiver is, in fact, quite empty. If you mean to wait for true love, I’m afraid you’ll be a maiden forever.”

  “I know that. And I don’t want to grow old and die without ever having...” She bit her lip, as reticent to say it as she’d always been to do it. “That’s why I...”

  “God’s bones. That’s what this is all about. You were hoping I’d rid you of your tiresome maidenhead.”

  “‘Twasn’t like that,” she said. “‘Twasn’t some...cold-blooded plan.”

  “Well, that’s something,” he said bitingly.

  “I wanted it.” She twisted around in the heap of straw to face him. “I wanted you. And I know you wanted me—not because you have...feelings for me, of course, but because...well, I suppose because a man simply has certain...animal needs.”

  He was studying her, his expression unreadable in the dim stall.

  “And that’s fine,” she said quickly. “That’s good. It’s perfect, in fact, because I don’t want any...emotional complications. I just want to experience—” she looked away, pulling her mantle around herself like a cocoon “—a bit more of life. Isn’t that what you’ve been saying I ought to do?”

  “Aye, but the way you’re proposing to do it—”

  “What I’m proposing,” she said, “is a very simple arrangement—a liaison, if you will, but of the most rudimentary sort, purely physical.”

  “I thought you said your plan wasn’t cold-blooded.”

  “If I were as dispassionate about all this as you seem to think I am, I’d have lost my innocence to someone else long before this. I told you I wanted you, and I meant it.” Careful. A man like Hugh of Wexford, for whom seduction was merely another pastime, would surely laugh if he knew she’d been lying awake night after night in a fever of desire for him. “The thing is, I want no attachments, but neither do you. Once this mission is concluded, we’ll never see each other again. Really, the circumstances are most advantageous.”

  “Advantageous circumstances,” Hugh muttered with a bitter little laugh. “Well, I suppose that’s better than if you prattled on about larks and starlings and the rest of that maudlin drivel.”

  “Then you’re...amendable to...to...”

  “Nay.” He stood, leaning over to swipe bits of straw off his chausses.

  “But...”

  “My...animal needs notwithstanding,” he said drolly, “I hardly think the way to satisfy them is by ruining maidens.”

  “Ruining...oh, for pity’s sake.” She awkwardly gained her feet, accepting the hand he offered. “You wouldn’t be ruining me. My reputation is past salvaging, and as for my virtue, I’ve little use for it. If anything, it’s become a burden to me.”

  “You say that now, but how will you feel on the morrow?”

  “Relieved.”

  “Possibly. Or you might discover, in the light of day, that you’ve squandered something precious...” He paused, adding soberly, “...on someone who didn’t appreciate it. I’ve never relished the role of debaucher, Phillipa. I don’t want to be the man a woman can’t bear to look at the next day when she realizes it really was just about sex.”

  “But it is just about sex. I’m no lovesick young girl, Hugh, and I mean it when I say I want no attachments. If you’re worried that I’ll pester you with unwanted attention afterward, rest assured I’ve no interest of that sort in you. You’re the last man I would lose my heart to.”

  Hugh’s expression darkened as he absorbed that. She could see his jaw shift as he gritted his teeth. “Thank you for the clarification, my lady, but it was hardly necessary. I’m quite well aware of my many shortcomings.”

  “I...that didn’t come out—”

  “It came out just fine.” Stalking into the aisle, he bent to retrieve his belt, which he buckled over his hips with swift, efficient movements. “I know how hard it is for you to feign tact, but you needn’t go to the trouble on my account.”

  “Hugh...”

  “Since we’re being honest,” he said acidly, “you might as well know that I’m not quite as noble as I’ve been letting on. ‘Tis true I’ve no taste for deflowering maidens, but not just because I’m too chivalrous to ruin them. The fact is, it’s a tedious business, initiating a virgin. I prefer an experienced woman who knows what she’s doing.”

  Phillipa’s cheeks burned with anger and humiliation as she watched Hugh turn and walk back down the aisle, only to pause in the entrance to Odin’s stall, one hand clawing through his hair. “There’s something I don’t understand.” With a caustic little grunt, he added, “
Quite a few things, actually, but...” Looking at her over his shoulder, he asked, “Given your...inexperience, why did you agree to this mission, knowing that it would entail sleeping with Aldous Ewing?”

  “I told you in the beginning,” she said testily, “you and Lord Richard, that there are more ways to get what one wants from a man than to barter one’s body for it.”

  Sighing, he bent over to retrieve the bridle from where he’d dropped it in the straw. “You really are very naive, my lady.”

  “Me—naive?”

  He turned to face her. “And as certain as ever that that all-too-clever little brain of yours will solve any problem and get you out of any fix. Only, it’s not your brain Aldous is so enamored of. I heard you trying to tease information out of him tonight, to no avail. But give him a taste of that for which he hungers so ardently—” Hugh’s gaze raked her head to toe “—and I daresay he’ll be far more malleable.”

  “Nonsense,” Phillipa said, but her protest rang hollow even to her ears. More and more over the past week, as Aldous had deflected her every attempt to cajole his secrets from him, she’d come to suspect that her efforts were entirely futile. “The problem is that Aldous isn’t stupid. To declare that he’s in sympathy with the queen is one thing. To admit his involvement in a plot against the king is treason. I’ve got to outwit him, not bed him.”

  “If you bed him,” Hugh said wearily, “you’ll be able to outwit him. This isn’t something I’d expect you to know, my lady, but men get stupid in bed—stupid and trusting and gullible. A man will confide far more to his mistress than he will to a woman who simply lets him feed her strawberries. Lord Richard knows this. That is why he expects you to become Aldous Ewing’s leman—as does Aldous by now. It is naive to think that you could entice a man like him indefinitely without delivering. Sooner or later he’ll get fed up with your little games and send you packing, and then where will we be?”

  Phillipa wished to God that he didn’t make so much excellent sense. She loathed being caught in a web of logic, that being her particular intellectual domain; that Hugh of Wexford had managed the feat only made it worse. “If I have to...deliver, I will,” she claimed, surprised that she more or less meant it.

  Why shouldn’t she bed Aldous Ewing, if it would help to keep England from another devastating civil war? Perhaps if some other man had a claim on her...but the only man in her life was standing right in front of her, and he seemed to harbor no feelings for her whatsoever—save perhaps for a mild contempt at her naivete. Hugh certainly wouldn’t mind if she took Aldous into her bed; indeed, he was pushing her in that direction just moments after his own aborted tryst with her.

  In addition to the other sensible reasons for bedding Aldous, there was the fact that Richard de Luci, Justiciar of the Realm, had gone to considerable effort and expense to recruit her, costume her for her part and install her in Aldous’s home. She shuddered to think what his lordship’s reaction might be if she quit the mission at this point over an aspect of it that he’d been completely frank about from the beginning—the expectation that she would become Aldous Ewing’s mistress.

  “You don’t mean that,” Hugh said, watching her closely. “You’ve no intention of letting Aldous seduce you.”

  “It’s just sex,” she said, trying to sound more indifferent than she felt, trying to believe it meant nothing, that she could do it for the good of the kingdom. “It did bother me before, to think of giving myself to a man I didn’t love, but as tonight will have proven, I no longer harbor such qualms.”

  Hugh searched her eyes, his consternation obvious—interesting—until he gathered himself and schooled his expression. “Nay, you’re bluffing. Surely you realize that Aldous will know you’re a virgin the first time he beds you. How would you manage to explain that, given that you and I are supposedly married?”

  There he went again, snaring her in another galling web of logic. She smiled slowly as it came to her how she could extricate herself from this one. “I never told Aldous in so many words that our marriage was consummated.”

  “Why would it not have been consummated?”

  She shrugged. “Perhaps I’ll tell him you have the pox and I don’t want to catch it.”

  “The pox.” He held up a hand. “Now, wait just a—”

  “Or I can say you’re incapable of performing,” she suggested, nonchalantly plucking pieces of straw off her mantle.

  “Incapable of...! You bloody well will not tell him I’m—”

  “Or—I know! I’ll tell him you prefer men, and that—”

  “What?”

  “And that the marriage is just for appearances.” Spinning around, she headed for the door.

  “Damn it, Phillipa—”

  “There are a hundred ways to explain it,” she said lightly, pausing in the doorway to glance back at him, standing there with his face turning purple and the harness quivering in his fist. “My all-too-clever little brain will come up with something.”

  Chapter 10

  “Your move.” Hugh sat back in his chair and reached for his wine as Phillipa studied the chess set laid out this evening on the little stone table on the balcony. She tended to take a great deal of time pondering her next move—unlike Hugh, whose decisions were a good deal more spontaneous—and she had a habit of chewing on her lower lip as she did so, which made her look deceptively childlike.

  Or was it deceptive? Now that Hugh knew she was not quite the worldly creature she’d pretended to be, she was less of an enigma...but just as fascinating. And, God help him, just as alluring.

  Laced this evening into a gown of bloodred satin, the pink-stained sky infusing her with a feverish blush, she put him in mind of some delicate little fruit just ripe for picking. Her hair had been plaited into four long braids which had then been wrapped together in pairs with intricately woven gold ribbons; around her head she wore a circlet of hammered gold. As she leaned over the chess board, her bosom swelled above the jewel-encrusted gold band that trimmed the tunic’s neckline, cut deliberately low to reveal a tantalizing little frill of sheer white silken kirtle.

  All through supper, as he’d watched her flirt with Aldous, Hugh couldn’t stop imagining her in that kirtle and nothing else, her hair loose about her shoulders, her arms open for him.

  Not for Aldous. For him.

  He shouldn’t indulge in such fancies, he knew, not after their disheartening little encounter in the stable last night. After she’d gone back into the house, he’d ridden like a demon and collapsed in bed just before dawn, despising her for the contempt in which she held him and determined to put her out of his mind.

  Yet he’d awakened this morning with his loins on fire from having dreamed of her yet again and cursing himself for not having taken what she’d so freely offered the night before. At least he would have cured himself of this insatiable hunger that afflicted him. Instead, after washing his hands of her last night, he was as much in her thrall as ever today. Joanna had always said he could never hold a grudge.

  Perhaps he’d better learn to. It was troubling enough to lust so singlemindedly after Phillipa, but to feel so possessive of her, so protective, to crave her company as he did, to find himself thinking that she was the most remarkable woman he’d ever known, to wonder, God help him, if she felt as drawn to him as he did to her...

  And, of course, to feel such white-hot fury at the thought of her giving herself to Aldous Ewing...

  To succumb to this type of infatuation was not only foolhardy but dangerous. When a man tethered himself to a woman, he never again had complete autonomy over his life, which was why Hugh had spent most of his five-and-thirty years avoiding such attachments. He’d learned how to keep his feelings in check while indulging the needs of his body. Although he’d liked most of the women who’d shared his bed over the years, and been genuinely fond of many of them, never once had he felt in danger of losing his heart.

  Until now.

  From below the balcony came the clopping
of hooves on flagstone and the voices of men speaking a foreign tongue. Phillipa met Hugh’s gaze for a brief moment before leaping up from the table, as did Hugh, to peer over the railing.

  Advancing into the courtyard through Aldous Ewing’s front gate were two men on mules, a pair of heavily-laden packhorses bringing up the rear. The man in front, dressed in a long, outmoded tunic criss-crossed with satchels and document cases, was lean to the point of being bony, with silver-threaded black hair puffing out from beneath a snug felt cap tied loosely beneath his chin. His humbly-dressed companion was also black-haired, but very stout and with swarthier skin.

  They reined in their mules and dismounted, the older one saying something in a language that sounded familiar to Hugh, although he recognized only about every other word.

  “It’s one of the Italian dialects,” he told Phillipa, “but not the one I know.”

  She glanced at him curiously, as if surprised that he spoke a foreign tongue; if she knew how many he spoke, after having fought alongside foreigners in every corner of the world, she would be stunned.

  Footsteps raced up the stairs; Hugh and Phillipa turned to find Claennis, one of Aldous’s pretty little maidservants, bursting into the salle. “Master Aldous! He’s here, the gentleman from...” She looked around anxiously before spying Hugh and Phillipa on the balcony. “Beg pardon, but do you know where I can find Master Aldous?”

  “We haven’t seen him since supper,” Hugh said as they entered the salle.

  “Oh.” Claennis wrung her hands. “There’s two gentleman downstairs, and I think one of them’s that Orlando Storzi Master Aldous has been waiting for. He’d wanted to greet him himself, but—”

  “Orlando Storzi!” Phillipa exclaimed, although the name meant naught to Hugh.

  “Aye, he’s come all the way from Rome, and Master Aldous—”