Almost Innocent (25 page)

“God’s nails! But you’re an obstinate little rogue! Let me tell you, madame, that there will be no hawking, now or later, until you get your priorities straight.”

“Oh.” Still with that quizzical gleam in her eye, Magdalen stood on tiptoe, slipping her arms around his neck, pressing her body against his. “Like this, you mean?”

“It’s certainly a step in the right direction.”

Her tongue slipped from between her lips, dampening the corner of his mouth with a little darting caress. Her breasts pressed warmly against the muscular expanse of his chest, and she moved one knee, suggestively stroking against the inside of his thigh. “Like this, you mean?” she repeated in a rustling whisper against his mouth as her knee pressed upward and her foot curled around his leg.

Guy made no answer, but his hands drifted down her back, coming to rest lightly on her hips, steadying her in her one-legged stance. Her upraised knee continued its teasing pressure between his thighs as her tongue darted over his mouth. Her nipples peaked, hard and burning against his skin, and she felt the little shuddering ripple where her flesh touched his.

Slowly, she returned her foot to the floor, standing back for a second to gaze with soft satisfaction at the sight of his arousal springing with unmistakable power from the curly nest at the base of his belly. She smiled, no impish smile this, but the smile of one who knew what she was about as she moved against him again, feeling the thrust of that power against her thigh. Delicately, she kissed his nipples, teasing them into hard erection with the tip of her tongue. Her hands moved to
palm the lean hips, slipping behind to the hard, muscular buttocks that rippled in immediate response. A light sweat misted her skin now as the tension built deep in her belly and her inner muscles contracted in involuntary preparation as she leaned into him, her grip on his buttocks tightening with the sudden urgency of passion.

“Hawking can wait, can it not?” Guy teased gently, globing her breasts, tracing tantalizing circles with his thumbs, circumventing the taut, wanting nipples until she thought she would die of the wanting. Her head fell back in a gesture of pure abandonment as her lower body moved with a sinuous urgency against his, seeking the fusion that had now become imperative.

“Sweet heaven, but you were made for loving, pippin,” Guy whispered, his voice husky, breath rustling against the fast-beating pulse at the base of her throat. He looked down at her upturned face, the delicate complexion flushed with desire, the great gray eyes enormous, deep pools of passion, the warm red lips parted. It was the face of a mature woman who knew her own depths, who knew how to give as well as to receive, who was not afraid to express her desire, nor afraid of another’s desire.

She locked her arms around his neck, rising again on tiptoe to reach against his length as his hot tongue took possession of the warm sweet cavern of her mouth and the roughness of his unshaven chin rasped deliciously against her cheek. The pressure of his lips made her own tingle, and she inhaled his special fragrance of the wind and sun embedded in his skin, mingling with the lingering scent of the lavender strewn among his shirts in the linen press. When he lifted her against him, without releasing her mouth, she curled her legs around his back and tightened her grip on his neck, clinging like a limpet as he stepped backward to the bed.

She loosened her grip as he bent to lay her down on the high feather mattress and stood looking at her, his
hungry eyes taking in every line and hollow of her body, its lights and shadows thrown into relief by the steady glow of the candle she had lit earlier.

Her own gaze ran over the body towering above her, broad and strong, a smooth-muscled fighting machine that for this moment was become an instrument of delight, hers and his. Reaching out a hand, she enclosed the pulsing shaft of pleasure, feeling the warm corded throb against her palm, the wondrous pliancy that soon would enter and fill her, joining them both in transcendent bodily fusion.

“I need you,” Guy whispered.

Drawing her knees up beneath her, she knelt on the bed, lowering her head to take him in her mouth, concentrating with every stretched nerve in feeling his desire and pleasure through the movements of her lips and tongue and fingers. She felt his hands on her bent head, fingers twisting convulsively in the tumbled hair at her neck, heard his breath, fast and uneven, as she moved her hands round to grasp his buttocks, her fingers digging into the hard, driving muscle as his mounting passion spread to enclose and involve her in the tight spiral that he broke abruptly, taking her by surprise as he pushed her urgently onto her back on the bed.

She looked up into a stranger’s eyes, deep, dark blue oceans of self-enclosed passion, and she knew that this time she must be responsible for her own desire and fulfillment because the man was lost in the swirling intensities of his body. And she gloried in the knowledge that it was her body that had released such a tempest.

Kneeling over her, he spread her thighs wide to receive the thrust of his turgid flesh. Magdalen heard herself whimper as her body closed around him and her belly tightened, her hips arcing as he pressed deeper, reaching her very core, it seemed. With each thrust, he drove harder, further, beyond the boundaries of her self. His head was thrown back, eyes closed, hands on her shoulders, so that she bore the weight of his upper
body. But she was able to bear the weight without difficulty, just as she found that she was able to take responsibility for her own pleasure, matching him thrust for thrust, her fingers biting deep into the flesh of his buttocks as she expressed her urgency the instant before the explosion wracked her body and her cry rang through the room, joined by Guy’s a split second later.

It was an eternity before the weight of him crushing her breasts, the soft press of his lips against her neck, brought Magdalen back to recognition of her own identity in the world. Her arms were flung wide on either side of her body as they had fallen in the aftermath of that explosion. Her legs were still spread wide around him, her skin damply melded with his. She brought her hand to his back, running a slow caress down the lean, muscular length. Guy raised his head and kissed her mouth.

“Enchantress,” he said softly. “You took me into a world I have never entered before.”

“I took us both,” she replied, and there was a hint of smugness in her voice that made Guy chuckle weakly.

“I know you did, love.”

“And now we may go a-hawking,” she declared, sitting up with a resurgence of energy. “I know it is past prime, but that is not my fault.”

“I thought we just agreed that it was,” he teased, running his hand over her thigh. “If it weren’t for your intemperate desires and consummate skills, we’d be long gone from here.”

Magdalen flung herself upon him with a squawk of outrage, and he laughingly defended himself, catching her wrists in one large hand, throwing a leg across her thighs, holding her still with his weight.

“Peace, or I shall be obliged to take reprisals and then we will never have time to go hawking.”

“But I did not start it,” she protested, wriggling to no good effect. “I said you were a faithless perjurer, and you are.”

“Oh, unjust!” He released her and sat up. “I suggest you remove yourself before such impertinence receives its due.”

“It was not impertinence, sir. I was much afraid that it was true, and I was afeared for your soul.” She tossed him a wicked grin as she leaped off the bed and ran for her robe, hastily wrapping it around her.

“Off with you!” Chuckling, Guy reached for the handbell to summon his attendants. “Make haste with your dressing and be in the mews court in half an hour. I’ve much work to accomplish this day and little time for more sport.”

Magdalen dressed swiftly, aware that Guy was indeed taking precious time out of his day to grant her the indulgence of a morning flying hawks beside the river. He had been absent a week, touring the de Bresse fiefdom, visiting the three other castles belonging to the suzerainty, arbitrating quarrels and disputed claims, dispensing justice and inspecting defenses. In his absence, matters requiring his attention at home had accumulated, and he had a tedious day’s work ahead of him. She had deputed for him as far as she was able, but a chatelaine’s authority was dependent upon the lord’s, and there were many issues in which she could make only temporary adjudication.

She felt no guilt, however, in having insisted upon the sporting expedition. In his absence, she had been confined to the castle enclosure, as was customary when a lady was left without the protection of her lord, and she was sorely in need of a broadening of horizons. Hawking and gentle rides through the countryside were the only physical activities approved by Lord de Gervais in his anxiety for her health, and he became visibly uneasy if she took such exercise in company other than his own. In light of this fact, Magdalen felt entitled to make certain demands of her own.

A wintry sun was offering a suffused pinkening of the horizon when she presented herself in the mews
court. Guy was already there, in conversation with the falconer, idly tickling the neck of his peregrine with a blade of grass. Dogs milled on the cobbles, dodging beneath the hooves of the horses, saddled and held by grooms, whose breath coiled whitely in the cold morning air.

Magdalen hurried over to the falconer. “I give you good day, Master Falconer. I trust Aleria is in placid humor.” She laughed, and the falconer smiled grudgingly. Magdalen’s merlin was an ill-tempered bird on occasion, challenging the falconer’s training and trying his patience sorely. He would have given her up as a bad lot if it hadn’t been for her owner’s cheerful insistence that the hawk was entitled to her moods.

“She’s not been flown for three days, my lady, so I trust she’ll be anxious to conduct herself well.”

Magdalen drew on the thick embroidered glove handed to her by her page. “If she misbehaves the first time, I will not fly her again. What of the gerfalcon?”

The gerfalcon was Magdalen’s pride and joy. It had been an unexpected gift from her father just before she left England, a gift symbolic in many ways. The laws of falconry were immutable, certain birds allotted to certain ranks of society. Guy de Gervais flew the peregrine of earls, and while merlins were flown by noble ladies, only those of royal blood could own a gerfalcon.

The hawk had been bred in Lancaster’s mews but had been untrained when he presented it to his daughter, and it would still be long before the bird could be flown by her new owner. But Magdalen kept a constant watch on her progress.

“She’s stubborn, my lady,” Master Falconer said with his grudging smile, but they could all hear the pride in his voice.

“But worth your pains,” Guy said.

“Oh, yes, indeed, my lord. Next month, my lady should be able to fly her on a creance. Do you care to see her?”

Magdalen was already halfway to the mews, her fur-trimmed surcote swinging with her impetuous strides.

It was gloomy in the mews, and the ripe smell of bird droppings and the blood of small animals hung in the cold air. The birds sat leashed to their perches, bright eyes, wickedly curved beaks; gripping, ripping talons, all stilled; the malevolent power of the predator harnessed to the will of man.

“Do you have a name for her?” Guy stood beside Magdalen in front of the half-trained gerfalcon.

“Diana,” Magdalen said promptly. “The huntress.”

He nodded, smiling. “A royal name for a royal bird. Let us start out now. It is almost full day.”

They rode from the castle by way of the postern gate and down to the river which circled the base of the hill, meandering through the town before wending its way to join with the Oise on the outskirts of the forest of Compiegne. The ground was frost-hard beneath the horses’ hooves, and there was a bite to the air that brought a pink tinge to Magdalen’s cheeks and reddened the tip of her nose. She lifted her head, tossing back the velvet hood of her
chaperon
, breathing deeply.

“Ah, it is such pleasure to be outside. When I may not leave the castle, it reminds me of being a child at Bellair.”

Guy laughed. “Unfortunately, we have no witch to cast spells for you to make something happen.”

Magdalen glanced sideways at him. “She once said to me that the time would come when I would pray that everything would stay the same, bad though it would be, because it would be better than what is to come.” The memory sent a graveyard chill down her back, and she saw that Guy was frowning, shadowed by the words.

“It was just mad Jennet,” she said, attempting to laugh it off. “I do not believe any of her spells came true.”

But inadvertently she had shattered the mood of the crisp morning, the reminiscence infecting the laughing intimacy with which the day had begun. She sensed the sadness that she dreaded descend upon her companion and could find no words with which to dispel it. She knew he lived this life with her under the shadow of guilt, a guilt she did not feel, because how could such love as they bore each other be in any way associated with wrongdoing?

They flew their hawks along the riverbank where the bullrushes gathered thickly at the edge of sluggish brown water. A flock of geese rose, screeching, necks elongated, from the rushes as the menacing shadow of the peregrine fell across them. But they were too large to be prey for the hawk and settled down again with much chattering and wing flapping.

“We will go back if you are anxious to be at your work,” Magdalen said in subdued tones, all pleasure in the expedition extinguished by the heaviness that had settled over her companion.

He gave her a slightly strained smile. “I own I have much on my mind, pippin, and the morning advances. It must be all of eight of the clock.”

“Yes,” she agreed, turning her palfrey. “Then let us return.”

Guy was looking for some way to chase away the bedeviling gloom when Magdalen abruptly kicked her mount’s flanks and set off at a canter along the river-bank, her hood flying. He set his own horse to follow, coming up with her when she drew rein at a clump of trees.

“Don’t be vexed,” she said, reading his expression correctly. “I needed to do that.”