The only thing he’d done last night that had shocked her—truly shocked her—was when he lowered his mouth to the damp, intoxicating nest of curls between her thighs. Speechless at first, she shoved him away. He went slowly then, persuading her with gentle entreaties and the skillful coaxing of his lips and tongue (funny the things one never forgets how to do!) into giving this strange new pleasure a chance. Gradually her murmurs of distaste were replaced by sighs of gratification; her resistance mellowed, her legs opened, her fingers clutched his hair... Her ecstasy became his ecstasy, his satisfaction. Afterward, she turned the tables on him, stunning him by pleasuring him with her mouth as he had pleasured her. He’d roused to her for the fifth time, but finished inside her, making slow, dreamy love, as if they had all the time in the world, as if they truly could be united in sensual bliss forever.
Remembering last night made the blood rush fast and hot to his groin. Reaching beneath the sheet, he touched his distended flesh gingerly. After last night’s excesses, it felt as raw as if it had been sanded, yet still it throbbed with the need to reclaim its territory, to penetrate, to possess.
Reclining next to the sleeping Corliss, he reached out and gradually lowered his hand over the sheet covering her chest. He barely grazed the finely woven linen, which tickled his palm and fingertips. Slowly—so slowly—he smoothed his hand over the subtle rise of one breast and then the other, feeling their warmth and softness through the sheet. It was strangely mesmerizing to touch her this way, while she slept unaware. As he softly stroked her, her nipples began to stiffen.
He trailed his hand down over the gentle slope of her belly, feeling the drum-tight flesh and the tiny, oddly seductive indentation of her navel. From there, he let his hand drift down between her parted legs, caressing her with aching gentleness until she grew hot and damp through the thin sheet. His touch was airy as a feather, and she slept through this as well, although her breathing quickened.
She moved slightly, snuggling into the feather mattress and arching her hips, just once. With careful movements he rolled on top of her, entering her in one long, smooth stroke. Her only acknowledgment of this was a contented exhalation. She was still asleep! Holding himself stiff-armed above her, he thrust very slowly, too sore in any case to do otherwise.
Her eyelids fluttered. “Rainulf...” He liked the way she said his name, all sleepy-gruff, like the growl of a kitten. Her eyes crinkled with pleasure when she realized he was inside her. She bent her knees and raised her hips, meeting his languid strokes.
He touched her where they were joined, and she writhed, transported. “Yes...” she breathed. “Yes... yes...”
He teased her sensitive flesh, backing off occasionally to add an element of frustration to her escalating arousal, wanting to drive her half-mad with desire before granting her release. It worked; she thrashed beneath him, fairly whimpering with her need.
A door opened. Footsteps thudded on the stairs.
They froze.
“Luella!” Corliss whispered.
Rainulf groaned deep in his throat. God, he was on the verge of climax! So was Corliss. He tried to lie still, but his body betrayed him, the muscles of his buttocks tensing and releasing and tensing again.
“Father Rainulf!” the housekeeper hollered from the main hall. “Are you home, Father?”
He couldn’t stop, not now. Cupping Corliss’s small bottom, he thrust again, and again—slowly, so as not to make the bed ropes complain—as he forced his groans back down into his chest. The woman in his arms trembled violently. She stilled, her body taut and shivering, her nails sinking into his back.
“Corliss?” Luella called. Rainulf heard the leather curtain being swept aside, heard the old woman’s heavy footsteps as she entered the chamber. She was in the room with them, separated only by the bed curtains!
Corliss opened her mouth in a wordless scream. She felt her internal contractions squeeze him, and then his own body convulsed suddenly, fiercely, discharging a torrent of seed deep into her heat.
As his orgasm waned, he slumped down, taking his weight on his elbows, and drew in a long, calming breath. Shuddering, they held each other as Luella slowly shuffled out of the chamber and reclosed the curtain.
“Do you think she heard us?” Corliss whispered.
“I don’t know.”
She frowned.
He recalled what she’d told him last night, about leaving here if anyone else discovered her true sex, and quickly amended his answer: “Nay. She didn’t hear. These curtains are heavy.”
Corliss glanced at the curtains, as if to verify that assessment. He held his breath until she nodded, her lower lip between her teeth.
Luella’s footsteps slowly descended the stairs. The door opened and closed. Her voice rose from the street as she greeted a neighbor, telling him she was going marketing.
Rainulf drew himself slowly out of Corliss, and she flinched. “You’re sore, too,” he said, sitting up.
She sat facing him. “A little. ‘Twas worth it.” She smiled, but her eyes were sad.
He lightly stroked her face with his fingertips. “What is it?”
“I should leave now, you know. I should move out of here and get my own—”
“Nay! Luella doesn’t know, she doesn’t! And if we’re discreet, she needn’t—”
“I know that.”
“Then why leave? You said you’d stay until people started suspecting—”
“That was before. Before we...” She looked around at the mammoth bed, with its rumpled sheets and scattered pillows. “Before this.” She shook her head miserably. “It was dangerous enough before, but now...”
“How can you speak of the danger to me, when Pigot is still lurking out there, searching for you? You need my protection.”
“My male disguise is my protection.”
“You still believe that after last night?” He raked his fingers through his hair in frustration. “You have a bad habit of believing what you want to believe, Corliss. You’re in grave danger. You must stay here until I can find safe accommodations for you elsewhere.” He took her face in his hands and forced her to look at him. “You said we had until the end of the summer. I’m holding you to that. I’ll be damned if I’ll give you up yet.”
He started to say more, but she cut him off. “I’ll stay until you’re formally appointed chancellor, as long as no one finds out about me before then. But after that, I—” Her voice quavered. “I’ll have to cut myself off from you entirely. No horrid little secret meetings—I’d hate that, and there’d be the risk of discovery. A clean break. It’s the only way.”
He squeezed his eyes closed against the grim immutability of her words. Drawing her into his arms, he rasped, “We aren’t supposed to be talking about this, remember? We’re just going to love each other. That’s all. No talking.”
* * *
An hour later, as Corliss sat down to share a breakfast of bread and watered ale with Rainulf, there came a furious pounding on the door. She flinched. What now?
“Master Fairfax! Master Fairfax! Come quickly!”
“That’s Thomas.” Rainulf sprinted down the stairs, and Corliss followed, her heart rattling in her chest. Downstairs they found Thomas and Brad, breathless and overwrought.
“It’s Victor!”
“The townsmen came and dragged him out of bed! They’ve beaten him half to death!”
“Damn.”
Corliss ran as fast as she could to keep up with Rainulf and the two scholars as they raced down St. John Street and up Grope Lane. A group of townsmen, their voices raised in fury, stood in a loose circle around something on the ground. Corliss smelled death.
“What goes here?” Rainulf demanded loudly.
The circle parted, revealing, beneath a swarm of flies, Burnell’s rank, gray-faced corpse supine in a pool of dried blood. Two men held Victor by the arms—held him up, for he was bloodied and battered, and doubtless couldn’t have stood on his own. Corliss recognized him
only from his long, dark hair and the green tunic beneath his torn cappa, which she knew to be his. His striking features were obscured by cuts and bruises. Around his neck he wore a noose at the end of a rope, which a third man held wound around his fist.
To Corliss’s amazement, Victor half bowed when he saw Rainulf, and even managed a grim smile. “Good morning, Magister. Care to get in a few licks before they stretch my neck?”
One of the men holding him rammed a fist into his lower back. He doubled over, grunting.
Rainulf shouldered the men aside and stepped into the circle. “Where’s the sheriff?”
The man holding the rope—massive, red faced, and slightly familiar looking—jabbed a finger toward Rainulf, growling in Anglicized French, “Piss on the sheriff! Piss on Victor of Aeskirche! And piss on you! Piss on all of you!” He screamed at the handful of black-robed scholars gathering at a distance, who responded with obscene gestures and a few choice epithets.
Rainulf nodded toward the noose around Victor’s neck. “You’re going to hang him just like that?”
The man with the rope pointed to the corpse. Corliss felt a tickle of wrongness in the back of her mind. Something was different about Burnell—out of place—although she couldn’t put her finger on it. “He killed my brother—just like that!” the big man spat out.
“He killed Pyt’s brother!” someone cried out. “He deserves to die!”
“Bloodthirsty, murderin’ bastard!” another voice screamed. “Shit-eating spawn of a whoring priest!”
“I’ve never eaten shit,” Victor informed this man, who blinked at this news.
Pyt yanked on the rope, almost jerking Victor out of the grip of the men holding him. “Last night this whoreson jumped my brother and slit his throat in cold blood.”
Corliss stepped forward. “Nay!” Rainulf seized her arm and yanked her back, hard. She looked at him. He met her gaze for only the briefest moment, his eyes flashing a sharp warning. She understood the warning perfectly: This crowd was primed for a hanging; it could be hers as easily as Victor’s. She didn’t want to hang, but nor did she want to see Victor take the blame for something he didn’t do. If anyone was responsible for Burnell’s death, it was she, although she doubted these men would care that it was in self-defense.
Rainulf folded his arms and addressed Burnell’s brother in calm, authoritative tones. “What makes you think Victor was responsible for this?”
Before Pyt could answer, Victor made a raspy, pained sound that Corliss realized was laughter of sorts. “Now, honestly, Magister. Can you think of a more likely candidate?”
The red-faced brute punched Victor in the stomach, then brought forth a dagger, which he handed to Rainulf. Corliss moved closer to inspect it as the magister turned it over in his hands. Carved into the bone hilt was the initial V.
“We found this on St. John Street, at the end of a trail of blood,” said Pyt. “Everyone knows it’s Victor’s. He’s waved it around often enough—usually at Burnell.”
“Did anyone bother to question Victor?” Rainulf inquired. “What does he say?”
That was smart, thought Corliss. Get the accused’s story before he starts speculating—offering alternatives.
The brute grunted dismissively. “He didn’t have much to say. Claims he didn’t do it, but wouldn’t say who did. Don’t take one of you” —he sneered— “fine gentlemen of learning to figure out he’s lying.”
“Oh, God,” Corliss moaned. Victor was protecting her! He could have named her, but instead he’d taken this savage beating and let them drape a noose around his neck. She couldn’t let him do this! She had to stop this! Victor must have sensed her panicky determination; he caught her eye and shook his head fractionally.
“Hang the bastard!” someone yelled, and others quickly took up the chant: “Hang him! Hang him! Hang him!”
As they started dragging Victor away, the audience of scholars began gathering rocks and sticks, and closing in; some had daggers, and one even produced a sword from beneath his cappa. “Wait!” Rainulf ordered them, and they paused. He grabbed Pyt by the arm and swung him around. “You’ve no right to hang him without a trial.”
Pyt drew himself up and seized Rainulf by the front of his tunic, screaming, “He had no right to do what he done to my brother!” He pointed to the corpse. “Look at him!”
Corliss did look at him. Burnell’s filmy eyes were half-open; his flesh, drained of life, was a sickly non-color. His coarse tunic was stiff with dried blood; the braies that encased his legs were spattered with it.
Blinking, she focused harder. The braies... She gasped. The braies!
She plucked at Rainulf’s sleeve.
“Not now, Corliss,” he ground out, pulling away.
“Rainulf, look at him!” she whispered, pointing to the lifeless body. “Don’t you see?”
“What are you—”
Grabbing his arm, she whispered into his ear, “His braies! Somebody pulled them up.”
Rainulf absorbed this for a moment; she saw enlightenment dawn in his eyes. “Who found the body?” he demanded.
The men looked at each other. “Marley found him... Where’s Marley?”
A rotund fellow stepped forward. “It was me,” he said with an odd mixture of sheepishness and defiance. “I was driving my cart past here at dawn, and I seen him lyin’ there, dead.”
“What did you do?” Rainulf asked. “Tell me everything you did, as you did it.”
Marley gaped. “I went and got Pyt and brung him back, so’s he could see what they done to his brother.”
“You didn’t touch the body first?” Rainulf asked.
The fat carter crossed himself as he regarded the corpse with an expression of distaste. “Nay. I kept clear of it.”
Rainulf turned toward Pyt. “Did you touch the body? Did you change anything about it?”
Corliss understood Rainulf’s strategy: If he were to announce outright that Burnell had had his braies down last night, everyone would wonder how he’d known. It might come out that he—and she—had been there when Burnell took his dagger in the throat. Rainulf had to tease the information forth as if he were just fishing for facts in general, not one fact in particular.
“I don’t see what you’re gettin’ at,” Pyt said, “and I don’t know as it’s any of your business if I did touch him.”
“Perhaps not,” Rainulf conceded, “but the sheriff might consider it his business. He wouldn’t like it if the body was disturbed before he had a chance to look it over. Now, think again.” He spoke to Pyt, but looked significantly toward Victor, who frowned in puzzlement. “Did you move anything on the body, adjust anything...?”
“His braies!” Victor exclaimed.
Rainulf expelled an audible sigh of relief; Corliss closed her eyes briefly, breathing a prayer of thanks.
“They were down around his ankles last night!” Victor said. “That’s how I saw him last, stumbling away with his pants down.”
A murmur bubbled through the crowd.
“Did you pull up his braies?” Rainulf asked Pyt.
“N-nay! I done nothin’!”
Pyt was lying, of course. Corliss could tell from Rainulf’s skeptical expression that he knew this, but rather than confronting him, he focused his stern gaze on the carter. “It must have been you, then. The sheriff won’t be pleased about this. You’ll be lucky if you get off with a flogging.”
“It wasn’t me!” the fat man wailed. “I didn’t do it! ‘Twas Pyt!”
“You squealing pig,” Pyt snarled, making a fist. “You lying son of a—”
“It’s the truth!” Marley claimed, backing away from the enraged brute. “I swear it on my mother’s soul. I saw him pull Burnell’s braies up. I saw it with my own eyes!”
“What if I did?” said Pyt, wheeling on Rainulf. “I was just trying to set him straight, trying to give the man some dignity. Where’s the harm in that?”
“The harm,” Rainulf explained, loudly enough for
everyone to hear, “lies in the fact that evidence has been altered. Burnell’s having his pants down might indicate that last night’s altercation was of an entirely different nature than what you’re all assuming.”
There were mumbles of bewilderment.
“I would recommend shorter words,” Victor suggested dryly. He earned another fist in the stomach for this bit of insolence, but it looked to Corliss like a rather half-hearted punch compared to the others.
“In other words,” Rainulf continued, “if it’s true that Victor jumped Burnell and cut his throat, why did Burnell have his braies down? Is it possible that Burnell was in the middle of doing something he shouldn’t have been, and Victor just happened on the scene?”
Pyt made a show of looking affronted. “If you’re trying to say my brother was in the habit of peein’ in the street—”
“That wasn’t what I was implying,” Rainulf said.
Pyt considered this for a moment, then managed a look of almost believable outrage. “Burnell was a married man!”
Snickering broke out in the crowd; men cleared their throats. The scholars were less discreet, hooting and offering loud and ribald observations on the character of the deceased. So much for Burnell having been “a married man.”
“Your brother,” Rainulf told Pyt, “had a reputation for viciousness. My guess is that he was trying to force himself on some unwilling woman—and that it wouldn’t have been the first time.”
Several of the men exchanged glances—glances that spoke volumes. Rainulf saw this and nodded slowly. “Nay... ‘twouldn’t have been the first time. Probably some of your own wives and sisters and daughters have fallen prey to Burnell, and not even told you.”
Pyt looked furious. “Now, wait a minute—”
“Shut up, Pyt!” someone said. “Let the man talk.”
“Here’s a hypothesis,” Rainulf said. The crowd muttered in confusion. “An idea,” he said, “a possible explanation of what happened last night. Burnell attacked a woman. She defended herself. He ended up with his own dagger in his throat.” A current of murmurs swept through the crowd. “Victor came upon the scene as Burnell was running away. He let the attacker go in order to aid the victim, who begged him not to speak of what had happened.”
Lords of Conquest Boxed Set Page 200
