Candle in the Window Page 14

  Propped on her elbow, her black hair tangled and the cotte slipping off her shoulder, she was an unconscious seductress. What could he do? What he had avoided the night before became, in the light and the fresh air of outdoors, a necessity.

  He kissed her fingers, one by one; he kissed the palm of her hand. Placing her hand on his shoulder, he leaned into her, moving with the slow precision of a gem cutter. Slanting his mouth across hers, he lined up their lips, avoided their noses, and pressed with light repetition until his respiration became hers.

  The wind dallied with the tendrils of her hair, and could he do less?

  He tugged her braid over her shoulder and untied the bit of ribbon that held it.

  “My hair’s a constant tangle with you around.” She chuckled, a little catch in her laugh.

  “’Tis beautiful.” He carried a handful to his face and rubbed it across his skin. He wanted to take his time, take her in this natural setting, and so he cupped her face and absorbed her expression of slightly amazed desire.

  His hesitation earned him a surprise. Her hand on his shoulder pushed and he tumbled, off balance, onto his back. “What…?” he sputtered, but she leaned over him and held his face. She found his mouth with an unalterable instinct and his breath caught on an inhale.

  She had, he realized, no idea of a woman’s proper place. What he had put down as a natural curiosity the night before was, perhaps, more aptly described as feminine aggression.

  He didn’t know how to deal with it. He’d heard of women who commanded the loving, but he’d dismissed it as the result of inadequate virility on behalf of the man. Without conceit, he respected his own masculinity, and he thought she should, too. He needed to teach her about submission, about how a man appreciates a woman who lies and waits for attention, who’s properly grateful.

  As her lips caressed his in the exact imitation of his earlier attentions, and mint flavored their kiss, he decided he could teach Saura her proper place later. Later, when she was done teaching him with her eager hands and her subtle mouth.

  “Are you comfortable?” She raised her head to ask, and without pausing for an answer, she tucked the blanket tighter. “Let me make you comfortable.”

  Dragging at his shirt, she raised it to let the sun shine on him. With her nimble fingers, she patted just the tips of the blonde hair on his chest. The contrast between the warmth of the sun and the chill caused by her titillation brought his hips up against hers.

  Leg draped over him, stomach to stomach, she slithered down his body.

  His hands sprang out to catch her before he thought, but she pushed them away. “Let me serve you. You’re my master. Let me make you comfortable.” The words were humble, her tone was not.

  Untying his hose, she tugged them down. “I never did explore your legs,” she laughed throatily. “So many muscles! I can feel each one.” She traced the length of one muscle and then massaged it with a firm touch. “You’re so tense.”

  He grunted, knowing his tension would dissipate under one of her treatments.

  She untied the rope at his waist and urged his hips up so she could lower his drawers. The morning glittered like a new coin; embarrassment struck him.

  Exposed in the outdoors?

  Never. William was reaching for his drawers to pull them up when her hand brushed across him. Creeping up the sensitive skin of his inner leg, she caressed his hips, found the evidence of his arousal.

  Light, gentle touches raised his fever and destroyed his perplexity.

  Exposed in the outdoors?

  God’s teeth, he’d assist Saura in every way possible. He flipped his shoes off to expedite her operations and marveled at his own fond illusion of control.

  The midnight of her hair caught in the golden curls at his groin, and he admired the erotic effect with pained suspense. How much longer could he hold out, he wondered. How much more of this torture could he withstand? He grasped her under her arms and pulled her up to his face. “Undress,” he ordered. “Quickly.”

  She stood up, her hands reaching for her ties, and as he watched her body emerged from the cotte, gleaming like sweet cream. “Quickly,” he urged again. “Quickly.”

  Still she stood above him, her brow wrinkled in solemn consideration. Then she put one foot over him and stood straddling him. Her face tilted to the sun; her chin jutted out, casting shadows on her chest. Her breasts sat high, casting shadows down her flat stomach. Her long legs glowed in the light.

  He braced himself for her descent, prepared to roll onto her, but she surprised him again. Why, he didn’t know. Saura of Roget had done nothing that didn’t surprise him, but this assumption of hers that she could sit on top of him. Surely she didn’t expect to….

  She did.

  “How did you learn so much?” he asked.

  It took her a moment to comprehend the question. “About what?”

  “About pleasuring a man.” His finger snuck out and tickled her, and she held herself rigid until he paused. “Tell me, Saura,” he coaxed.

  “What? Oh, do I give you pleasure?” Her teeth gleamed in a brief smile that faded when he touched her again. “I just think what would give me pleasure, and I do it to you.”

  He returned to his slow glide, back and forth in hedonistic reciprocity.

  Tossing her head, she murmured, “Nay. William, nay.” Her lids drooped, veiling those violet eyes and lending her an expression of sensuous enjoyment. Her lips opened and glints of her teeth enticed him, enhanced by the tip of her tongue held firmly at the side in intense concentration. Her nipples puckered as a sudden shiver raced from the heart of her gratification up her spine, and those eyes jolted open. In all seriousness now, she said, “Nay!” and stopped him with her hand on his, pushing away his fingers and guiding his erection.

  Slowly imprisoned by her body, he stared, fascinated, as her savor of the moment gave way to a new urgency. Her first upward surge caught him by surprise, and unschooled as she was, she almost rose too far. He caught her hips and held her as she readjusted. Then he helped her set a leisurely rhythm, in tune with the morning peace.

  He watched the clouds float overhead, looking so close they could catch in the trees and yet so far up they piled in towers above. Spring-green leaves swayed in the light breeze, and one robin hopped from branch to branch, seeking just the right twig. Saura’s face, set against that blue sky, was the loveliest thing he’d ever seen: delicate and arousing, sensitive and carnal. Beneath his hands, her thigh muscles bunched and relaxed, riding passion from its careful beginning to the ending of his choice.

  Lifting his fingers to her breasts, he brushed the tips with exquisite intent and was rewarded by a sudden agitation inside her body. He smiled, prepared to provide for her satisfaction, when she leaned over him, searching with her mouth. Her teeth bit his nipples gently; she suckled with greedy pleasure.

  Shock, like a frenzied aphrodisiac, scrambled his brain. He bucked beneath her, startling her with his new insistence, and she responded with a sharp bounce. Suddenly, what was a leisurely pleasure transformed itself into a race for completion. They grappled for dominance; they struggled for fulfillment, twisting and moving in a primeval beat.

  Fighting as one, they strained in agonizing pleasure and she reached her peak first. Her exulting scream rent the air, startling the robin above them. In a flutter of feathers, it sprang into the clouds, and William felt his body go with it. Everything he was, he put into Saura, entrusting her with his seed and receiving her euphoria in return.

  Then she collapsed on his chest, moaning, “No more,” but still shuddering when he curled into her.

  He didn’t think he could move, but when she quivered in the aftershocks, he found the strength to pet her head, to rub her back, to press up against her pelvis and agitate her once more. When he could find his voice, he murmured, “Women are marvelous creatures. What I can do once, they can do many times. Of course,” he laughed close to her ear, “I can crawl away afterwards.”

&nbs
p; “Base, proud tottyhead,” she said in a voice tinted with scorn and laden with exhaustion.

  “Has no one ever told you what a glorious woman you are?”

  “Nay.”

  “Of course not. No man has discovered it, nor will he. You’re mine.”

  A pause. “Aye.”

  Picking his words with care, he said, “I’ve been lonely, looking for a woman with whom I share common interests. I’m not a stupid boy, seeing only the outer shell. I want to laugh, eat, sleep, talk with my woman. I want a woman I like.” The lax body draped on his stiffened as he spoke, and he wondered. “I like you. I like to laugh, eat, sleep and talk with you. Your beauty and grace add decoration to our meal, but it affects not the substance or flavor. As you said earlier,” humor lit his voice, “you don’t have to feed your eyes on ugliness, and my face is of no interest to you.”

  That stirred her to motion. “You’re not ugly. Maud told me so.”

  “Well, if Maud said so,” he chuckled at her vehemence, then returned to rational discussion. “As for the advantages to you, Lady Saura, I’d like to recommend myself as a knight. If we were doing this correctly, my father would be saying this to your guardian, but we’ve anticipated the proprieties and I feel the need to point out my usefulness. With all due modesty, of course.”

  She wasn’t responding with the animation he expected; indeed, she seemed to shrink into herself. “I’m a great warrior, competent to command your men and protect your lands.” Her lack of reaction, her deadly calm cut his words; he wanted to offer for her in a way she would remember with honor all the days of their lives. But this made her unhappy, he could feel it in the clutch of her hands on his arms. “Therefore, Lady Saura of Roget, we will live together and unite our souls as we’ve united our bodies.”

  “Nay!” She struggled up and off him. “I cannot.”

  She swept her hair back over her shoulders, her hands trembling with a great agitation, and he observed her closely. “Why?” he asked simply.

  Groping for her cotte, she pulled it on with haste, hiding her body from his gaze as if the fragile cloth were some armor that would protect her from pain. “You’re not thinking, my lord.” Tugging the laces, she seized on the least of his concerns. “You’ve no need to marry me because you deflowered me. ’Tis not necessary, not necessary.”

  Sitting up, he wrapped his arms around one knee. “Did you not listen to all I’ve said? What happens to us when our bodies meet is unique, a melding of two souls. Your virginity, or your lack of it, influences me not at all.”

  “Guilt, your guilt when you woke with your eyes that functioned and saw me.”

  He made an intensely negative gesture, but she could never see it.

  Rubbing the crease between her brows with her knuckles, she continued, “You’re euphoric about your sight, you’re pleased about our escape, but if you think, you’ll realize you don’t want an imperfect woman in your bed.”

  “Imperfect!” He drew breath to shout at her, but the view of one rosy-pink nipple peeking through a rent in her cotte disarmed him. With a gulp, he achieved a moderate tone and asked, “What the hell was I when I struggled in the grey mist? I don’t feel any more perfect now than I did a fortnight ago.”

  “You pity me, and I’ve already told you what I think of pity.” Her lips lifted in a pathetic attempt at a smile.

  “Is that what you felt for me two nights ago? Pity? Is that why you gave me your body?”

  “Oh, nay. Nay. Two nights ago, I harbored thoughts of…well, but that was before you regained your sight. Think, William. What if…what if we had children?”

  “I could almost assure you we’ll have children. Within the year. Do you not like children?”

  “What if they were blind?”

  The nipple winked at him, sliding behind the veil of cloth. Its shy allure encouraged him to try logic, a unique method to deal with women, but Saura was a unique woman. “As God wills. But what of the other children born of your mother? Is there another child in your family without sight?”

  “Nay, but—”

  “We’ll be the best parents any child every had.”

  “But I can’t marry you,” she said wretchedly.

  The delicacy of this situation required more strategy than he’d realized. He’d never seen such insecurities, hidden as they were in the confident persona of Lady Saura. But there was more than one way to scrape the chestnuts from the fire. With conscious cruelty, he said, “You should mind your needle and leave such matters of business to the men who are your betters,” he snapped.

  Immediately, a fiery blush ignited her face. “I thought you meant…I thought you were asking me if I desired such a union.”

  “Whether I marry you or not is none of your concern. A woman goes where she is placed by her guardian. Most ladies of your station are married at thirteen, and perhaps your greater age has made you insensible to a woman’s true nature.”

  Her mouth opened, but nothing came out. She seemed to be grasping for words, unable to decide what to say or how to say it. “My greater age? Is that an impediment to marriage?”

  “It could be, for a younger woman is easily taught the ways of her lord and molded to his desires. A younger woman sits at her lord’s feet in the evening and forgives him his indiscretions even as he commits them.”

  “You don’t need a wife,” she said with exasperation. “You need a puppy.”

  “A younger woman,” he said severely, “hasn’t yet developed a saucy tongue.”

  She didn’t quite believe this orthodoxy of him, he could see, and her question rang with a hint of skepticism. “Perhaps you could explain a woman’s true nature, my lord?”

  Step softly, he cautioned himself. No one believed everything the priests told them about the wicked ways of females and how they should be subservient to their male masters. The reality was too different, and this woman was too intelligent to believe him if he pretended to subscribe to the hard line of the Church. Yet he could soften the traditional stance and say, “Women are incapable of deciding what’s best for them. They should pass from the firm hand of their father to the firm hand of their husband with their head bowed in obedience and their minds on only how to create a pleasant home. If I should decide to wed you, Lady Saura, remember, your only part in the proceedings is to assent in the ceremony before the witnesses.”

  Her face displayed a mixture of frustration and amazement. “That is the usual view of marriage.”

  “Never forget it,” he ordered, and he saw her dreams falling in crushing chunks around her shoulders. The misery on her face wrung his heart, yet to release her would destroy his strategy. Hardening his heart, he asked with assumed casualness, “What would you do if you couldn’t stay at Burke?”

  “I suppose I would have to return to my stepfather’s house.”

  His restraint ended with an abrupt roar. Her breath caught in her throat as he snagged her wrist in a furious grip.

  “My Lady Saura, you’d better search that ridiculous mind of yours for another answer, for I’ll never allow you to do such a thing.” He flung her hand away from him, and she heard a distant barking. “Never. Now conceal yourself. Someone approaches.”

  eight

  The sepulchral barking grew closer, more menacing, and Saura crouched on her heels behind the rocks where William put her. The dampness of the soil cooled her feet, the feet that wanted to fly away from this place of entrapment. Her heart pounded from fear and residual tension. William’s vehemence, her fear of recapture, they were nothing compared to the fears she harbored in her soul.

  Now she could hear a man’s shouting, mixing with the muffled bark of a large dog. She put her hand to her throat. Perhaps the unknown mastermind of William’s murder had no plans for recapture, perhaps death would visit their bit of paradise.

  William would never let that happen. The thought popped unbidden into her mind. Without being told, she knew William stood alone, the sword glittering in the sun. Whoever or w
hatever entered into the clearing had better be primed for a fight.

  She heard the barking animal spring clear of the surrounding wood and enter the copse, heard William exclaim, “Ye gads,” in disgusted tones.

  With a jolt of recognition, she called, “William, it’s—” Great paws embraced her shoulders and a worshiping tongue slurped her face. Her heels flew out from under her, her bottom hit the ground with a jolt. “Bula.” She pushed at the great dog. “Bula! Down! Bula, stop it!”

  The beast lay down immediately and rolled its head in her lap, whimpering and yipping. Her hands were full, trying to deal with his ecstasy, and she only vaguely heard the man’s voice as he broke into the hollow.

  “Saura, come out,” William called. “’Tis the hunter from Burke.”

  “I know,” she said with irritation. “I could guess.”

  “M’lady!” Her hand was snatched by Alden, on his knees before her and fighting the dog for her attention. “Praise the good St. Wilfred ye’re well.”

  “I’m well,” said Saura in irritation, running her hands along Bula’s sides. “But who’s been starving this dog? He’s nothing but ribs and skin.”

  “He wouldn’t eat, m’lady. Moped around whinin’ for ye.”

  “We’ve only been gone two days!”

  “Aye, an’ the castle in turmoil an’ no un payin’ a bit of attention t’ an old soldier an’ a besotted dog. So after this old soldier returned from his scoutin’—”

  “Scouting?” Saura asked.

  “It was the afternoon ye were taken, an’ Master Kimball an’ Master Clare arrived at the castle, acryin’ an’ ablamin’ themselves.”

  “They raced to the keep to warn Lord Peter?”

  “Aye, but Lord Peter wasn’t there an’ all was in a flurry wi’ the men-at-arms tryin’ t’ prepare for some attack an’ no un followin’ ye as they should ha’ been. So I went out an’ looked for the trail till I stumbled on the mercenaries what took ye off.”

  “Nay!” Saura cried, reaching out her hands to Alden. She found his head, swaddled in bandages and asked, “Are you seriously hurt?”