“My lady? Lady Corliss.”
She lowered her goblet slowly, her expression of surprise giving way to a gracious smile. “I’m sorry, Sir Peter. I didn’t realize you were speaking to me.”
He returned the smile. “Of course I was speaking to you. You might as well be the only person at this table, for your beauty is so blinding that I can barely see the others.”
Rainulf gulped down his brandy and gestured grimly for another.
* * *
Corliss watched Rainulf hand the two books to his sister and then slowly circle the table and return to his seat next to her. She smiled and pretended interest as Martine exclaimed over the gifts, all the while keeping a close watch on Rainulf out of the corner of her eye.
He was drunk. Very drunk. He’d barely nibbled at his supper, and now his almond-spice cake sat untouched before him while he poured himself yet another goblet of wine. She’d often seen men drink to excess, but never Rainulf Fairfax. Once, he’d told her how much he hated the unbalanced feeling that came with drunkenness, and she’d gotten the impression it almost frightened him. Yet he’d spent this entire meal getting steadily—and, it seemed, deliberately—intoxicated.
He was the only person at the table who was truly in his cups, but she seemed to be the only one who recognized his condition. Conversation had been lively during the meal, and no one seemed to notice Rainulf’s silence, or the increasing lack of focus in his eyes. All his movements were slow and deliberate, as if it was important to him to seem his normal, coolheaded, unflappable self. He’d fooled the others.
But not me. Perhaps it was because she sat right next to him, and could see the slight unsteadiness in his careful gestures. Or perhaps it was simply that she’d come to know him so well—too well to be taken in by his feigned sobriety.
“My lady? Did you hear me?”
She started, and met Sir Peter’s intent gaze. “Aye... She grinned sheepishly. “Nay.”
He smiled compassionately. “You’re fatigued from your journey. I understand. I had asked you if you would care to join me for some hawking tomorrow afternoon.”
“Hawking?” She saw Rainulf’s knuckles turn white as he gripped his goblet, then brought it to his mouth and emptied it swiftly. “I’m afraid I’ve never... I don’t know how—”
“Oh, I’ll show you everything you need to know. And the baron can supply you with a gauntlet and a suitable bird. What say you, Thorne? Have you a tame little falcon for my lady to hunt with?”
Corliss saw the Saxon’s amused gaze flick toward Rainulf before turning to her. “I’ve got a lovely little merlin who’ll serve you well, my lady. Meek as a newborn pup—till she lands her prey, of course. Then she shows her true colors. Falcons need meat like they need to breathe.”
Thorne popped the last bit of his cake into his mouth and dusted off his hands, his azure eyes trained on Rainulf. “No creature can keep its true needs in check forever. One can go years pretending they don’t exist. But nature despises pretense, and eventually the desire to satisfy them becomes... overpowering. Impossible to resist.”
Rainulf glowered at him. Thorne grinned and said to Corliss, “The merlin’s name is Guinevere, after Arthur’s queen. I’ll introduce you to her on the morrow.”
With a mumbled “Excuse me,” Rainulf stood. For a moment he clutched at the tablecloth. His wavering gaze took in the diners and then rested on Corliss. He started to say something, but then seemed to change his mind. Beneath the wine-induced haze in his eyes she thought she saw a hint of uneasiness, even dread.
He hates being drunk. It scares him. She watched him as he took his leave, crossing the great hall with cautious, unhurried steps.
“Do you play chess, Lady Corliss?”
She glanced briefly at Sir Peter, then returned her attention to Rainulf as he made his way to the stairwell. “Nay, I never learned how.”
“Then I’d be honored if you’d let me teach you after supper.”
“Tonight?” she asked distractedly as Rainulf ducked into the stairwell and disappeared from view.
“Aye. Unless... That is, if you’re too tired from your trip—”
“I am, I’m afraid.” She rose, and the men all stood. “More tired than I’d realized. I hate to retire so early, but...”
“Of course,” Peter said. “But you must let me walk you upstairs.”
“Nay, don’t trouble yourself.”
“But it’s no—”
“Please. I’ll be fine.”
“But—”
“What time shall I meet you tomorrow, Sir Peter?”
“Ah.” Her ruse worked; he left off arguing and smiled in anticipation. “After the noon meal? At the hawk house?”
“I shall be there.” She bid the company a hasty good night and followed Rainulf into the torchlit stairwell.
Halfway up the circular stairs, she came upon him sitting on one of the cold stone steps and leaning against the wall.
“Oh, Rainulf.”
He groaned when he saw her.
“Let me help you.” She went to lift him under the arms, but he grabbed her hands.
“I’m fine,” he said thickly.
“You’re not fine. You’re drunk.”
“Nay, I’m fine. Just don’t make me move.”
“You can’t stay here.” She tried to raise him up by the hands, but he resisted her, pulling her down until she sank to her knees on the step beneath him, his long legs flanking her.
“I can damn well stay wherever I want.”
She’d never heard him sound so surly. “Come on,” she said, struggling to her feet. “I’m taking you to—”
“Stop it!” Releasing her hands, he seized her shoulders and lowered her roughly. “I just...” He shook his head helplessly. “I can’t...”
She made her voice gentle and tried to rise again. “Rainulf, please.”
“No!” He shoved her to her knees so abruptly that one side of her gown slid down her arm. With a seemingly great effort he focused on the crumpled silk beneath his hand, and the shoulder that he had inadvertently exposed.
Very slowly his hand moved up, hot and slightly rough against the bare skin of her upper arm. She shivered as he gripped her naked shoulder. He caressed her, his expression one of mystification, as if he were watching the unfathomable actions of another person. His thumb glided along the shaft of her collarbone, and back again, robbing the breath from her lungs. She felt dizzy, and as he swayed slightly, so did she.
She saw his throat move as he swallowed. Then his expression sobered and he righted her sleeve, smoothing the purple silk carefully over her shoulder. He sighed and closed his eyes, his hands urging her toward him until she was crushed against him, his chin resting on her head. She thought she heard him murmur her name, and something that sounded like “I’m such a fool,” as his arms encircled her.
She wrapped her arms around him and pressed her ear to his chest, listening to the erratic thudding of his heart beneath the wool tunic. “Shh... You’re just drunk.”
“I was a fool to get drunk,” he whispered.
“‘Tis no great sin. Everyone does it once in a while.”
“I hate it, though,” he mumbled.
“I know.” She looked up at him. “But you’ll feel better once you’re in your own bed. Try closing your eyes while I walk you back to your chamber. I’ll bet that’ll do the trick.”
He shook his head, but she pressed her fingertips to his eyelids and forced him to do as she asked. “There. Keep them closed.” This time, when she stood and lifted him under the arms, he rose willingly, leaning on her shoulder as she walked him up the stairs and into his lamplit chamber, closing the door behind them.
“This way.” She guided him to his big bed, swept aside the curtains, and helped him to lie down on his back. “Let’s get you comfortable.” Sitting next to him, she pulled his boots off and set them on the floor, then reached for his belt and hesitated. He had his eyes closed, his face turned away. B
iting her lip, she took hold of the silver buckle and began working the thick leather belt through it, but it didn’t slide easily, and the buckle was designed in some peculiar way that she couldn’t figure out. As she fumbled with it, she became aware of his eyes on her, studying her face as she struggled to undress him, and her cheeks stung.
He managed a small smile and closed a hand over both of hers. “Let me.” She slid her hands out of his. He undid the buckle and whipped the belt off, then sat up. “Ohhh...” He covered his face with his hands.
“I know, Rainulf. I know.”
“Help me with my tunic?”
Between the two of them, they managed to get the heavy garment over his head. The shirt came with it, leaving him in naught but his chausses.
“Are you comfortable?” she asked, trying to keep from staring at his bare chest. “Do you need some water?”
He shook his head and groaned. “Oh, God. I just wish... God, I wish everything would stop moving.”
“I know.” She tried to rise, but he reached out and took her by the upper arms, pulling her with him as he lay back down.
“Stay,” he pleaded, wrapping his arms around her and forcing her to lie next to him. “Just until it stops. Till everything is still.”
He held her with her head on his shoulder. Thinking her gold circlet must be digging into him, she pulled it off and tossed it aside, then lay stiffly, wondering what to do with her outside arm.
“Here.” He took it and draped it across his stomach, then tightened his arms around her and held her close.
As his breathing slowed and steadied, and his arms around her grew heavy, she began to relax. It was quite wonderful, really, lying there in Rainulf Fairfax’s embrace, even if he was dead drunk and only wanted her for a bit of comfort. She was glad to be of comfort, gratified that she could make his world stop spinning long enough for him to get to sleep.
She yawned, thinking she would have to get up and return to her own chamber before she succumbed to the drowsiness that was creeping over her.
Just a few more moments. She closed her eyes and settled against him, feeling the heat from his half-naked body through the thin silk of her gown.
* * *
Rainulf stood at St. Mary’s high lectern and looked down on the faces of hundreds—no, thousands—of young, black-robed scholars, staring up at him expectantly. No, not scholars, he realized... birds, little black baby birds, their mouths agape, waiting to be fed.
He wanted to feed them, but he hadn’t any food, not the right kind, anyway. They’d trusted him, but they shouldn’t have. He was consumed with doubt, and his doubt made him unworthy. He’d deluded them, gathered them here under false pretenses...
He shook his head violently. “I can’t,” he muttered, his voice dull and distant. “I want to, but I can’t. I have nothing for you.”
A soft rustling... the beating of thousands of tiny wings. He felt their silken feathers brush his skin as the birds flew into the air, gathering around him, their beaks wide open, begging for food. Begging, begging...
“Nay!” He lashed out at them, fighting them off as they closed in on him, wanting what he had no right to give...
A whisper: “Shh... easy.”
His fist connected and one of them cried out. No, it wasn’t one of the birds, he realized, growing still as soft hands closed around his wrists. The cry had been that of a woman.
“Rainulf... Rainulf, open your eyes.”
With a great effort, he slitted his eyes open and saw her in the darkness, hovering over him... an angel come to rescue him. Her eyes were huge, her face iridescent in the moonlight. She released his wrists, and he reached up with both trembling hands, taking her face between them. He’d never thought an angel could feel so soft, so real... He stroked her lips, traced the inky brushstroke of an eyebrow...
“It’s all right,” she whispered. “Nothing’s wrong. Go back to sleep.”
She touched his eyelids, and they closed. He felt her cool fingers around his wrists again as she gently lowered his armst. “Sleep.”
He sensed her weight easing off him, heard again that delicate, silken rustle as her wings lifted her into the air, felt the lack of her, the emptiness where she had been.
The last thing he heard before unconsciousness reclaimed him was a door softly closing.
* * *
Rainulf opened his eyes and squinted at the midmorning sunlight pouring through the window. He lifted his head and fell back with a groan, squeezing his eyes shut against a blinding spasm of pain. “Damn.”
His mouth tasted sour; his stomach roiled. He thought back to last night, concentrating. The last thing he remembered was drinking wine at supper. He must have drunk too much, far too much. This was his first hangover since his university days.
He covered his face with his hands and sniffed, breathing in the scent that clung to them, and—perplexingly—to his arms and shoulders and chest... night-opening flowers and Oriental spices... sweetness and sensuality and the wisdom of the ages...
Corliss.
A longing unfurled within him, tainted with uneasiness. How had he come to have Corliss’s perfume on him? He sat up slowly, wincing, and looked down at himself, bare-chested atop rumpled bed coverings. Reaching behind him for a pillow, he brought it to his nose and inhaled the exotic fragrance with which it was imbued. Corliss’s fragrance.
The longing intensified, gathering in his loins and taking shape as a rigid, aching need. With a moan he lay back down and rested a hand on his throbbing groin, feeling a demand so sudden and intense as to be painful. Surrendering to that pain, he untied his chausses to relieve it—an indulgence he generally disdained, but could not resist in the face of this overpowering need. He closed his eyes and imagined that it was Corliss’s hot, tight body closing around him, coaxing the pain from him and replacing it with pleasure.
Relief came quickly, but it brought little real solace. He still felt empty, and so needful.
And he still wondered how Corliss’s maddeningly arousing scent had permeated his bed, and him.
He washed and dressed, his movements careful in deference to his queasy stomach and pulsing head. Voices from outside drew him to the window. Shielding his eyes, he peered down into the garden that took up a good part of the bailey to the east of the keep—Martine’s precisely laid-out, geometrically designed herb garden.
His sister was there, and next to her, Corliss kneeling over a row of something Rainulf couldn’t hope to identify. Martine pulled weeds while Corliss drew on a wax tablet. Both women wore aprons over their kirtles, and wide-brimmed straw hats such as villeins wore in the fields. Despite his body’s miseries, he smiled. No one would think that these two hardworking, humbly dressed women were a baroness and her houseguest.
Martine looked up and saw him, then grinned and nudged her companion. Corliss lifted her head and followed Martine’s pointing hand. She met his gaze and held it for a moment, her expression inscrutable. Rainulf raised his hand, then froze, staring at a dark spot on Corliss’s jaw—a bruise. She must have seen his dismay, because she reached up to touch the purpling blemish, then looked away quickly.
Too quickly.
Rainulf gripped the windowsill, appalled. Had he given her that bruise? No... it was impossible. He could never hurt her.
He scoured his memory, straining to remember anything about last night, anything after all that drinking. Had she really been in his bed? Was it possible he had simply imagined the perfume? Closing his eyes, he conjured up a vague recollection of seizing her and pulling her down, forcing her to lie with him. He could still feel the liquid-smooth whisper of silk against his naked skin, the soft pressure of her breasts on his chest, the heat of her cheek against his shoulder.
He turned and looked toward the bed. Something glimmered on the floor beneath it, half-hidden by the edge of the quilt. Crossing to it, he crouched and picked it up; it was the golden circlet that Corliss had worn last night.
God, no. What ha
d he done? He struggled to remember as he returned to the window. Corliss glanced back up at him and then lowered her head over her tablet. Had he tried to force himself on her? Was that how she’d gotten hurt? If so, he hadn’t been successful; he was certain of that. After eleven years of abstinence, if he had bedded a woman—particularly Corliss—he would surely remember, regardless of how much wine he had drunk.
But had he tried?
Never in his life had he taken an unwilling woman, or attempted to. The idea disgusted him and, in truth, he’d never had the need. As a young scholar in Paris, they’d come to him—even wellborn girls betrothed to others. Their coy flirtations quickly metamorphosed into heated whispers and secret meetings. He never lied to them, never pretended to feelings that didn’t exist. Yet still they would press his hands to their breasts, unlace their kirtles, and raise their skirts. He’d been young and unfettered by vows, and what they offered, he took.
But he’d always waited until they gave their bodies freely; he never pushed the matter. He’d never had to. Then.
Had he changed so much? Was he now capable of such shameful behavior—toward Corliss? He thought of himself as a good man, a principled man. Disgustedly, he shook his head. He thought of himself as better than other men, holier, more in command of his animal nature. As usual, the sin of pride weighed heavily on him. In truth, he was just a man, with a man’s weaknesses. Just how weak had he been last night? Damn, if he could only remember!
He closed the window’s glass panels and leaned his forehead against them. He must keep his distance from her. He must. His desire for her had grown too unruly. He mustn’t think about her as a woman, mustn’t indulge his body’s carnal needs while imagining that it was she who touched him, she who took him inside her.
Even if he hadn’t tried to take advantage of her last night, he feared he was capable of doing so—a chilling prospect. She was ever on his mind, ever stirring up thoughts and desires best left dormant.
He was worn-out, used up. All he wanted in life was to be appointed Chancellor of Oxford and then to live out the rest of his years in a kind of numb, unthinking repose. Until Corliss came along, he’d never questioned that goal. But she’d touched his heart, made him itch for things he’d given up wanting long ago, made him question his well-laid plans. And that was not a good thing.
Lords of Conquest Boxed Set Page 192
