Lords of Conquest Boxed Set

by Patricia Ryan

  “Luke,” she choked out. “Luke...” She stilled, breathless. “Don’t do this. Don’t do this, Luke, please.”

  He felt her heart thundering through her thin gown. Her eyes shimmered with unshed tears.

  “Christ, don’t cry,” he said huskily.

  “I won’t. I wouldn’t. Not in front of...” She looked away, struggling to compose herself.

  Not in front of him. Of course not. He was the last person to whom she would expose her soft underbelly—especially after this little display of savagery.

  He could feel the rage dissipating in the face of her fear and helplessness, feel the beast retreating to its lair, deep within him. Thank God he’d managed to rein it in before it could vent the full measure of its fury. Never in the past had it been so easily subdued.

  She returned her gaze to his. “Let me go, Luke. You don’t want to... to...”

  “God, no.” Luke released her wrists and cupped her face with tremulous hands. He and Faithe were both shaking uncontrollably. “The last thing I’d ever want to do is hurt you. I’m sorry, my lady, I’m so—”

  “Faithe,” she whispered raggedly.

  A drop of blood landed on her upper lip. He wiped it off with his thumb.

  “Faithe,” he breathed, loving the simplicity of her name, the soft feel of it in his mouth. He rubbed his thumb over the drops on her cheek.

  Her gaze focused on his nose. “I’m sorry for that.”

  “You had every right to do that, and worse.” He eased away from her, drawing her skirt down as he rolled to the side. “Christ.” He threw an arm over his face. “I’m an animal. I should be locked up in a cage.”

  He felt her rise from the bed, and then he heard her soft footsteps in the rushes, and the sound of water being poured from the ewer into the washbasin. Presently, the mattress dipped as she sat next to him. Something cold touched his nose, and he flinched. “What—”

  “Shh...”

  She sat over him, dabbing gingerly at his nose and upper lip with a wet cloth, which quickly turned red. She dipped it in the basin, which she’d brought to the night table, and continued cleaning off the blood. Luke watched her as she tended to him, her forehead slightly creased with concentration, her eyes dark with concern.

  For him. She obviously felt contrite for having hurt him—ludicrous, given the provocation—and now, ever the healer, she’d taken it upon herself to nurse him. The injury to his nose, although it still pulsed with pain, was inconsequential. Part of him wanted to reject her succor; he didn’t deserve it. But another part wanted to stay like this forever, basking in her tender attentions. For her to take care of him this way, after what he’d done, humbled him.

  “That’s better.” She rinsed the cloth thoroughly, wrung it out, and gently stroked it across his forehead. It felt so cool, so infinitely soothing. His eyes closed; his hands fell open limply at his sides. She bathed his face and throat and arms until he lay in dazed gratification, and then she dropped the cloth in the basin and curled up next to him.

  Luke turned to her as naturally as if he’d done it a thousand times, and gathered her in his arms. She returned the embrace, gliding her arms around him and fitting her body to his. He stroked her hair as their heartbeats synchronized, breathing in the essence of almonds and thyme.

  He felt the warmth of her body through her whisper-thin gown, felt her breasts crushed to his bare chest. Yet, curiously, he felt a far greater measure of contentment than desire. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d held someone just for the comfort of it; in fact, he didn’t think he ever had.

  “I’m such an idiot,” she whispered.

  He pulled back a little to look upon her face. She wouldn’t meet his eyes.

  “I thought I knew why you didn’t want to bed me,” she said into his shoulder. “I thought you wanted to annul the marriage.”

  He rose onto an elbow. “Why, for God’s sake?”

  “So that you’d get Hauekleah without... having to be wed to me.”

  She thought he’d wanted to take her estate from her! No wonder she’d been so desperate as to resort to this bungled seduction. He understood now, but still, it stung to discover that her motives had nothing to do with him, and everything to do with Hauekleah. “I should have known your purpose in... tempting me that way... went deeper than mere duty. What kind of woman would voluntarily bed the Black Dragon, even if it were expected of her?”

  “Luke...” Her eyes closed; she shook her head sadly. “I’m sorry.”

  He tucked a stray hair behind her ear. “For a moment there, I thought you actually wanted me.” A grim chuckle escaped him. “You’d think I’d be old enough not to let wishful thinking influence my judgment.”

  Her arms tightened around him. “Luke...”

  “It’s been a very, very long time since there was anything good and pure in my life,” he said quietly. “Now there’s Hauekleah... and you.” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “For once, I’m surrounded not by ugliness and death, but...” He trailed his fingertips lightly over her face; she closed her eyes and bit her lip. “I don’t want to sully what I’ve been given. Our marriage may have been a coldhearted arrangement, but that doesn’t mean it has to be a coldhearted marriage.”

  He shook his head in frustration at the inadequacy of words and flopped down on his back to study the network of massive timbers supporting the steeply pitched ceiling. “What I’m trying to say is, I don’t want you on just any terms. I certainly don’t want you if you’re just submitting to me out of a sense of duty, or to protect your rights as my wife. And I don’t want you if you fear me, even a little. When you give yourself to me—if you ever do—I want it to be because that’s what you truly want.”

  “If I ever do?” she whispered.

  Luke sat up and looked down at her. He knew what she was thinking. As long as their marriage went unconsummated, he’d be able to annul it and take Hauekleah from her. “I won’t bed you just to ease your mind,” he said softly. “God knows I want you, but not if that’s the only way I can have you. You’ve got to learn to trust me. Until then, I’d just as soon sleep on the floor, if it’s all the same to you.”

  She sat up next to him. “The floor!”

  “I’m a soldier,” he reminded her. “Or was. I can sleep anywhere.”

  “But why should you have to? Why should you suffer in the rushes, when you could sleep in comfort on a feather mattress?”

  He rubbed his neck, his gaze wandering from her tousled hair to her flushed lips to the enticing swell of her breasts beneath the sheer gown. “I daresay I’ll suffer more in your bed, my la—Faithe.”

  Hot color suffused her face. “As you wish... Luke.”

  “Wishes...” He smiled ruefully. “Aye, well, those are a different matter entirely.”

  Chapter 8

  “Where are we, boy?” Orrik demanded of young Alfrith as his lackey, Baldric, hoisted the child atop a boulder at the edge of the forest known as Nortwalde.

  “Th-the northernmost boundary of Hauekleah, Master Orrik.”

  Alfrith squeezed his eyes shut and hunched his shoulders. Faithe winced in sympathetic anticipation.

  “Right you are,” Orrik praised. Then he nodded at Baldric, who grabbed Alfrith by the front of his tunic and walloped him across the face.

  “Thank you, master,” the child muttered as the bailiff helped him down from the boulder and instructed Baldric to lift up the next boy, young Bram.

  “Where are we, boy?”

  Bram ducked his head and mumbled something unintelligible.

  “Is this really necessary?” Luke asked Faithe, whispering the question in her ear so that the many onlookers—nearly the entire population of Hauekleah—wouldn’t hear.

  He’d been quiet but observant all morning, as the villagers walked Hauekleah’s perimeter in the annual ceremony that seared the borders into the memories of the next generation. Faithe had wondered what his reaction would be.

  “The boys must
be made to remember where our land ends and the neighbors’ begins,” she pointed out as Baldric pried Bram’s hands from his face and gave him his ritual slap.

  “Why? Why not just record the boundaries in writing?”

  “There is a written charter,” Faithe patiently explained, “but none of these people can understand it. Orrik and I are the only people at Hauekleah who can read and write.”

  “I can... to some extent.”

  “Yes,” she said quickly. “I meant the three of us.”

  A lie, of course. In truth, although a fortnight had passed since her marriage to Luke, Faithe still had trouble thinking of him as the master of Hauekleah. Not that he hadn’t made every effort to establish himself as such. He spent his days exploring the village and surrounding countryside, introducing himself to his new villeins and questioning them at length about the work they did and how they lived. He studied everything there was to study and inspected everything there was to inspect. He pored over Orrik’s books detailing harvest yields, demesne production, rents, taxes, and fines. From all appearances, he embraced his new role with the greatest of zeal.

  Still, Faithe couldn’t help but feel that his enthusiasm would surely wane. Her Danish grandfather, Thorgeirr, had been much the same at first, according to Grandmother Hlynn. Setting aside his tools of war, he’d seemed devoted to Hauekleah. He’d even torn down the old, dark manor house and build enormous, sunny Hauekleah Hall in its place. But by the end of the summer, boredom had set in, and his hand had itched for the weight of the sword. One rainy September morning, he saddled up his warhorse and rode away, without so much as a word of farewell to his pregnant wife.

  Soldiers are ill suited to farm life, Hlynn had explained to Faithe many times over the years. Agents of death have no patience for making things grow.

  As a child, Faithe used to imagine an “agent of death” as a hulking, mail-clad brute with a horned helmet and a bloody sword in each fist. A fanciful image, to be sure. What, she wondered, did a real agent of death look like?

  She contemplated her husband discreetly as he watched one boy after another accept his slap. Luke’s gray tunic, though of good Sicilian wool, was simply cut and devoid of ornamentation. He wore no snippet of lambskin nor sword to indicate his rank, and although he was clean-shaven, his braided hair was as long as that of his Saxon villeins. He looked nothing like a Norman nobleman, but neither could he be mistaken for an Englishman. Like her, he didn’t seem to fit neatly into any one world.

  He stood with arms crossed, one hand resting across his mouth, his expression reflective as he observed the proceedings. When he grimaced, Faithe turned toward the boulder to see what had affected him so. Little Felix stood up there, his legs quaking as Baldric pried his hands off his face.

  The quick slap seemed to momentarily stun the child, and then he burst into tears and held his arms out, crying, “Mummy! Mummy!” His mother scooped him up and patted his back as he sniffled wetly.

  “Look at the baby!” Alfrith jeered. The other boys joined in, taunting little Felix with their usual insults. Felix was seven years old, but small for his age, and of a quiet and cautious nature. To make matters worse, after his father’s death last year, he’d become strongly attached to his mother, causing the other boys to view him as infantile. They wanted nothing to do with him, except as an object of scorn. He was friendless and fatherless, and his dependence on his mother grew daily, inviting yet more ridicule—a vicious circle.

  As Felix’s crying worsened and the derision escalated, Luke regarded Faithe with a reproachful expression.

  “I doubt he’ll soon forget the northern boundary of Hauekleah,” she said, but without much enthusiasm.

  Luke just sighed and shook his head.

  The huge assembly—-over two hundred people—turned and walked in a southwesterly direction, toward the north curve of the river. Luke remained at her side, taking her hand at one point to help her over a fallen log. His touch made her heart race like a bird’s. When she was safely past the obstruction, he released her. Could he sense her disappointment? Did it amuse him?

  True to his word, he’d taken to sleeping on the floor of their bedchamber, wrapped up in a blanket in the rushes. They never again discussed that awful night; it was as if her misbegotten attempt to seduce him had been entirely forgotten, which was all for the good. It shamed her that she’d assigned such base motives to his reluctance to consummate the marriage.

  If she was to believe him, he wouldn’t accept her in his bed until she was unreservedly willing—no residual fear, no ambivalence. She had to care for him. She had to trust him. The paradox, of course, was that his refusal to bed her made it all that much harder to trust him, inasmuch as a platonic marriage could be readily annulled.

  Nevertheless, Faithe knew that, in all likelihood, he’d never had any intention of casting her aside. She could remain at Hauekleah. But would he remain here with her? She had a hard time believing that someone like Luke de Périgueux could be happy spending the rest of his life on a farm. Agents of death have no patience for making things grow...

  Would she lower her guard and learn to care for him, only to wake up one morning and find him gone, like Thorgeirr? Perhaps she could trust him not to steal Hauekleah from her, but could she trust him to be here next year, and the year after?

  How ironic. Before he’d arrived, she’d prayed that the Black Dragon would tire quickly of farm life and leave her in peace. Now, she found that possibility troubling.

  When they got to the river, Faithe and Luke joined Orrik and Baldric on the wooden bridge next to the mill, while the rest of the villagers watched from the north bank.

  Orrik called Alfrith onto the bridge. “Where are we, boy?”

  Alfrith licked his lips nervously. “The western edge of Hauekleah, master.”

  The boy flinched as Baldric’s hand neared him. “Relax, boy,” Orrik soothed. “He’s not going to hit you.”

  Alfrith’s expression of gratitude was swiftly replaced by shock as Baldric laughingly lifted him in the air and hurled him over the side of the bridge. The boy sailed, screaming, into the water, landing with a loud splash and sinking like a stone.

  A few long moments passed. Luke leaned over the edge of the bridge. “Is he all right?”

  Alfrith bobbed to the surface, sputtering and thrashing his arms and legs, and awkwardly made his way ashore to the cheers of the spectators.

  Bram had to be dragged onto the bridge, but he didn’t resist when Baldric lifted him up, merely sucked in a giant breath and pinched his nose closed. As he was helped out of the water, a high-pitched shrieking commenced.

  “Oh, dear,” Faithe murmured as Felix’s white-faced mother carried her writhing son toward the bridge.

  “No!” the boy wailed. “No, Mummy, please! No! No! No!” The other boys laughed uproariously in the face of Felix’s terror.

  “Bring him forward,” Orrik ordered the woman.

  “If you please, Master Orrik,” she said, “my Felix can’t swim.”

  “Neither can the others.”

  “But he’s just a wee thing, master, and he’s so scared.”

  “All the better,” Orrik said. “‘Twill fix this spot in his memory. Now, give him over.”

  Baldric wrested the frantic child out of his mother’s arms and hauled him, flailing and screaming, onto the bridge.

  “Oh, for pity’s sake.” Luke let go of Faithe’s hand and held out his arms. “Give him here.”

  Baldric looked for guidance to Orrik, who glowered at his new master. “He’ll do no such—”

  “Yes, he will, Orrik,” Lady Faithe said quietly, in Latin. “Don’t force me to discipline you in front of the villagers.”

  Orrik’s face flooded with purple. He barked a command at Baldric, who thrust the squirming Felix at Luke. Ducking his head, Luke settled the child on his broad shoulders. Felix became quiet and alert.

  “Felix,” Luke said gravely as he grasped the boy’s feet, hanging down
on either side of his chest.

  “Aye, milord.”

  “I command you to remember, in future years, the morning when you were the tallest person in Hauekleah.”

  Felix gazed around at the multitude of faces looking up at him—including the other boys, clearly awed—and smiled.

  “And when you remember this morning,” Luke instructed, “you are to remember that this bridge marks the westernmost boundary of Hauekleah. Can you remember that?”

  “Aye, milord!”

  “Will you remember it always?”

  “Forever, milord!”

  “That suits me,” Luke said, “if it suits my lady wife.”

  Faithe smiled broadly, disarmed, despite her misgivings about Luke, by his compassion for a terrified little boy. “It suits me quite well, my lord husband.”

  Something meltingly intimate glimmered in his eyes, and he almost smiled. “Good.” He patted the boy’s foot. “Are you hungry, Felix?”

  “That I am, sire.”

  “Would you care to join me at my table for the noon meal?”

  Felix gasped with astonished pleasure as the other boys exchanged looks of incredulity. “Can Mummy come?”

  “Of course.”

  The boy leaned over to look Luke in the face and whispered, “Will you make me eat any turnips?”

  “Felix!” his mother scolded.

  “‘Tis a fair question,” Luke told her. “I can’t bear turnips myself,” he assured Felix, “and I wouldn’t dream of inflicting them on you. I understand there’s to be some sort of sweetmeat for dessert, though. You might be called upon to eat some of that.”

  “I wouldn’t mind that,” the child confided.

  “Excellent.” With Felix on his shoulders and his hand held out to her, Luke looked the very antithesis of an agent of death. Faithe took his hand and let him lead her back toward Hauekleah Hall.

  When she glanced behind her, she saw the rest of the villagers dispersing... except for Orrik, who stood alone on the bridge, glowering into the water.

  * * *