Enchanted (25 page)

“I find no fault in my wife,” Simon
said evenly.

“Of course not. ’Tis the very thing I
told the innkeeper at the Sign of the Fallen Tree when he talked of
a cold marriage made in haste,” Geoffrey said in a hearty
voice. “A girl of Ariane’s wanton nature would never be
able to keep herself from her husband’s bed.”

Though Simon showed no outward response to
Geoffrey’s tactless words, Sven began measuring the knight
for a shroud.

“Unless, of course,” Geoffrey continued
cheerfully, “Ariane were yearning for her first lover to the
point that she couldn’t force herself to permit another man
entrance to her snug little, er…bed.”

“I have known magpies that were less
talkative than this creature,” Sven said casually.
“More fair of face, too.”

“’Tis a thing that can be cured,”
Simon said. “The speech, that is. The face is beyond mortal
help.”

“Have I offended you?” Geoffrey asked
Simon. “By the Cross, you are a sensitive soul. But then,
people with a sore spot do jump when it is touched, is that not
so?”

Simon’s smile was a simple baring of
teeth.

“I meant no offense,” Geoffrey said
carelessly. “If my clumsy congratulations on your
wife’s sensual nature irritate you, I can only hope to be
more precise with my praise in the future.”

Sven shot a quick look at Simon, seeking a sign as
to how to handle the knight whose compliments were worse than any
insults Sven had ever heard delivered to Simon’s face.

A moment later Simon’s fingers brushed
casually against Sven’s sword hand in an old signal for
caution.

“Good evening, Ariane,” Simon said,
looking past Geoffrey. “Did you enjoy the herb
gardens?”

“Ah, my little cabbage,” Geoffrey said,
turning quickly. “If you only knew how I have longed to be
within your warmth again. You have bewitched my very soul. I wither
out of your sight.”

“Would that it were true,” Ariane said.
“I would lock myself in my room until you died.”

With that, she went quickly to stand with Simon and
Sven.

“I would be wounded, if I didn’t know
your heart of hearts,” Geoffrey said, smiling at Ariane.
“A married girl is a cautious girl, especially in the
presence of her husband, yes?”

“I decided to play my harp along the
river,” Ariane said to Simon, ignoring Geoffrey.

“Ah, that explains it,” Geoffrey
said.

As he spoke, he gestured toward the bits of leaves
and brambles clinging to Ariane’s mantle.

“Careless of you,” Geoffrey murmured.
“A jealous husband would think you had lain back upon your
mantle and spread your legs for a lover.”

Ariane went white and gave Simon a horrified
glance. What she saw made ice condense in her blood.

She had never seen Simon so furious.

Nor so cold.

“Simon is a man of reason, not
emotion,” Ariane said thinly.

“’Tis good that you know him so
well,” Geoffrey said in an earnest voice. “Some would
think it cowardice rather than reason that guides your
husband.”

Sven said something in the harsh northern language
of his mother.

“This fine knight,” Simon said to
Ariane, “believes himself well beloved by your father. Is it
true?”

“Aye,” Ariane said, making no attempt
to conceal the bitterness in her voice.

“How well beloved?”

“As much as my father can love
anything.”

“Pity,” Simon said. “I would
rather feed this one to the pigs than feed pig to him at table
tonight.”

“Is that an insult?” Geoffrey
demanded.

“Why would a man of reason insult a knight
such as yourself?” Simon asked.

“Because you suspect that your wife is in
love with me. Because you—”

“Nay!” Ariane said harshly.

“—suspect that I am the man who took
your wife’s maidenhead in passionate battle. Because you
suspect—”

Ariane made a sound that was both Geoffrey’s
name and a savage curse.

“—she is cold with you,” Geoffrey
continued, talking over all interruptions, “for she cannot
endure another man after having known me!”

There was a stunned silence in the bailey.

All that prevented Ariane from clawing
Geoffrey’s smiling face was her husband’s hand beneath
her mantle, locked about both her wrists. Though she struggled
subtly, she had no hope of winning free to do the damage she
wished.

Nor could she undo the damage that had been
done.

“If you were indeed my wife’s first
taste of love,” Simon said evenly, “’tis a
miracle that she didn’t swear off men entirely and take up
the veil.”

Before Geoffrey could speak, Simon turned to
Sven.

“Show our guest to the stable,” Simon
said. “He can bed down with his stallion.”

“Aye,” Sven said. “This
way.”

When Geoffrey began to object about the
inhospitable quarters, Sven cut across his words.

“Be quick about it,” Sven said curtly.
“We have so many knights that the clean hay is soon
taken.”

Geoffrey hesitated, shrugged, and set off after
Sven.

Ariane let out a long, ragged sigh. She looked up
at Simon, wanting to explain how Geoffrey had twisted the truth to
make it appear that she had compromised her honor today—and
Simon’s.

The words Ariane would have spoken fled as she
confronted the clear black savagery of her husband’s
eyes.

“Listen to me,” Simon said.
“Listen to me very well. Whatever happened before you wed me
cannot be changed. But if you have cuckolded me—”

“It wasn’t as Geoffrey made it
appear!”

“—leave now, before I find out. Run
fast and run far or I shall catch you. Then we will spend eternity
in hell together. Do you understand me,
wife
?”

Ariane wanted to speak, but the only word she could
force past the constriction in her throat was Simon’s
name.

“I see that you understand,” he
said.

Abruptly Simon released his hold on Ariane’s
wrists. She drew in her breath swiftly, for beneath his cold fury
she sensed that there was something more. Something worse.
Something she, too, had known—the savage, consuming acid of
betrayal.

“Simon,” Ariane said, reaching out.

“Do up your laces,” Simon interrupted
curtly, stepping away from her touch, “lest you give the
gossips of this keep even more to drool and snigger over than you
already have.”

Ariane looked down. Through the opening in her
mantle peeked the trailing ends of silver laces. A flush consumed
her pale skin when she realized that her dress was partly
undone.

“It isn’t what you think!” Ariane
said passionately.

“What I think is that you are very fortunate
the Glendruid Wolf values peace above war,
and
that I value my brother above all else
.”

“My wound pained me,” Ariane said.
“I undid my dress to see if I had somehow hurt it
anew!”

“Did your head pain you, too?” Simon
asked silkily.

“My head?” Ariane asked, baffled.

“Aye,” Simon said, turning, walking
away with cool finality. “Your hair is even more undone than
your dress.”

A
riane got up from the supper table
and went to her bedchamber with a few muttered words about being
tired. The truth was that she hadn’t been able to bear
listening any longer to Geoffrey’s insinuations strip away
Simon’s pride and her honor in front of the assembled knights
of the keep.

Rather grimly Ariane wondered if Simon still
thought that marriage was no worse than the sultan’s hell
Dominic had once endured.

The food grew cold on the supper tray Blanche had
brought to Ariane’s room, as Ariane simply sat and stared at
nothing at all. Footsteps came and went in the hallway leading to
the bath, but she took no notice.

Even the harp was no consolation. Ariane was
finding that it was harder to abide Simon’s pain and
humiliation than it had been to endure her own. She hadn’t
caused her agony. But she was causing Simon’s.

A knocking on the closed door dragged
Ariane’s attention from her own bleak thoughts.

“Yes?” she said.

“’Tis Blanche.”

“Enter,” Ariane said without
enthusiasm.

The door opened. A quick look around the room told
Blanche that nothing had changed since she left.

“Are you not finished eating yet,
m’lady?” Blanche asked a bit impatiently.

“I have no appetite.”

“What of your bath, then?”

“My bath?”

“Aye, m’lady,” Blanche said,
irritated. “I have prepared a bath as you requested and laid
out a warm chemise for sleeping and everyone else in the keep is
already abed.”

Blankly Ariane looked from her untouched supper to
her handmaiden’s face.

“Did I ask that you prepare a bath?”
Ariane said, frowning.

“Aye, m’lady. Straight after you ate,
you said. You said you couldn’t bear something-or-other
having touched your skin and you must wash no matter how late the
hour.”

“Oh.”

Blanche waited, but Ariane said nothing more.

“M’lady?”

“Would you like to seek your own bed?”
Ariane asked.

“Aye, most certainly. If you
please.”

“You are free.”

“Thank you, lady!”

Cheeks flushed and eyes sparkling with
anticipation, Blanche rushed out of the room, barely remembering to
close the door after herself.

Ariane wondered if Blanche’s new
man—whoever he was—knew that his lover was already gone
with another man’s child. Perhaps he didn’t care.
Perhaps it was enough to share Blanche’s breathless laughter
in the darkness, to reach out and stroke warm flesh and be stroked
in return, to hold another body close and hear ecstasy in each
broken cry.

Abruptly Ariane stood, stripped off all her
clothes, and pulled the pins out of her hair. As she shook her
head, hair like fine black silk cascaded down her back to lie in
heavy, smoothly shining waves to her hips. She gathered it up and
began braiding it for the bath, but lost interest after a few
twists. The moment she let go of the hair, it began unraveling.

She reached for her nightdress, only to find that
her hands went to the silver laces of the Learned dress as
though summoned. She was reluctant to leave the dress
behind, even to bathe. She didn’t know why, she simply knew
that it was so.

As though expecting the answer to be found in the
fabric itself, Ariane looked at the dress.

And then she looked
into
it.

A woman of intense feeling,
head thrown back, hair wild, lips open upon a cry of unbelievable
pleasure
.

The enchanted
.

A warrior both disciplined and
passionate, his whole being focused in the moment
.

The enchanter
.

Now he was bending down to
her, drinking her cries even as he drew more sounds from her. His
powerful body was poised over hers, waiting, shivering with a
sensual hunger that was as great as his restraint
.

Simon
!

Ariane saw him as clearly as she saw herself in the
woman’s wild amethyst eyes.

“Dear God,” she whispered, dazed.

Ariane shook herself and looked around the room,
half expecting to find Simon there. What she saw was a fire burned
near to ash, a bed turned down for her use, and spare blankets
piled across the foot of the mattress.

Blankets that would become Simon’s bed when
he came to the room.

If he came.

Ariane pulled the amethyst dress back on and laced
it partway up as she paced the room. With each step the deep
silence of the keep came back to her ears. Then the sentry called
the time.

Simon should have come to the bedchamber by now. He
had always come before now. Well before now, because Simon rose
with the kitchen workers at the first crack of dawn to walk the
battlements and check upon the well-being of the fields and people
of the keep. Dominic walked with him, though he never required
Simon’s presence at such an early hour.

Marie
.

Simon is with her
.

The thought was like a dagger going into Ariane.
Without stopping to think she lit a candle and left her room so
quickly that the flame guttered. With an impatient exclamation,
Ariane stopped long enough for the flame to recover.

Shielding the fragile flame with her hand, Ariane
hurried to the opposite side of the keep, where Marie and Blanche
shared quarters. There was no true door for the maidservants,
simply a cloth screen that could be moved aside during the day.

“’Tis Lady Ariane,” she said.

“My lady,” Marie said. “Please
enter.”

Ariane slid between screen and doorway before Marie
was finished speaking. Amethyst eyes searched the room quickly,
then more slowly.

“You’re alone.”

Ariane wasn’t surprised to find Blanche gone.
But she was surprised to find Marie alone. The dark-eyed woman had
a lap full of sewing and a curious expression on her face.

“Aye. I am alone,” Marie agreed.
“Is there something you require, lady?”

“Simon.”

“Then you will have to look elsewhere. Simon
hasn’t come to my bed since…”

Without finishing the sentence, Marie shrugged and
began plying her needle once more with astonishing speed.

“Since when?” Ariane asked.

“Since my husband saw Simon sneaking from my
tent, thought he was Dominic, and betrayed Dominic’s band of
knights into a sultan’s ambush.”

“God’s blood,” breathed
Ariane.

“More like the knights’ blood,”
Marie said.

Her small teeth flashed in the candlelight as she
nipped off a thread that had knotted.

“Most of the knights were captured by the
sultan’s men,” Marie continued, threading a new
needle.

“Was Simon?”

“Aye. But none of the captured knights was
the right one.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The knight whom the sultan dearly wanted and
whom Robert had betrayed wasn’t among the captured
knights,” Marie explained.

“Dominic le Sabre?” Ariane guessed.

“Aye.”

“Why did the sultan particularly want
Dominic?”

“The sultan had a taste for torture. Dominic
had the name of a very strong, very brave knight who bowed to no
man. The sultan vowed to destroy him.”

“What happened?”

“Dominic traded himself for the freedom of
his knights. One of those knights was Simon.”

“The knights were released?”

“Aye.”

“And then Dominic was somehow freed?”
Ariane asked.

“Aye. After a time.”

“Then why…?”

“Why does Simon hate me?” Marie
asked.

Ariane nodded.

“Simon was near my husband when Robert was
mortally wounded during the ambush,” Marie said calmly.
“Before Robert died, he confessed to Simon what he had done
to Dominic. And why.”

“But Simon knew that Dominic was innocent of
any sin.”

“Aye,” Marie said. “It was Simon
rather than his brother who lay with me after my marriage to
Robert. Since he heard Robert’s dying confession, Simon
hasn’t touched me. He blames himself for what happened to
Dominic.”

“I thought you said Dominic was
freed.”

“He was. But only after he was tortured such
as few men have been and survived.”

Ariane tried to speak. At first nothing came out.
She swallowed and tried again.

“In the armory,” Ariane said.
“Simon kissed you.”

Silently Marie shook out her sewing, plucked a
stray thread, and looked up at the woman who was close to her age
in years, yet so far away in experience.

“Simon didn’t kiss me,” Marie
said. “I kissed Simon. I suspected he was angry enough with
you not to mind angering you in turn, so I kissed him. Simon
hasn’t willingly touched me since he heard Robert’s
confession.”

“Never?”

“No.”

“But the Holy Crusade was years
ago!”

“Aye. Simon is a man of extraordinary
passion. It will be many more years before he forgets. Or forgives
me.”

“He loved you,” Ariane said
painfully.

“Love?”

Marie laughed and smoothed the embroidered silk she
was sewing. Her mouth was an amused curve as she knotted the
thread, bit it through, and smoothed the knot until it was
invisible. She picked up the needle and threaded it once more.

“Simon didn’t love me,” Marie
said, sewing quickly. “I was simply the first woman he had
bedded who did much more than lie on her back and think of God. My
sexual skills all but enslaved him for a time.”

Ariane couldn’t hide her shock at
Marie’s bluntness, which only amused Marie more.

“You must have had a nun’s
childhood,” Marie said.

“Far from it. My mother was forced by my
father. It was the only way he could have her. She was a woman of
unusual…gifts.”

“A witch?”

“Some called her that. Here, I suspect she
would have been called Learned.”

“A witch,” Marie said succinctly.
“Did her gifts come to you?”

“Only for a time.”

Marie gave Ariane a sharp look, then went back to
her sewing, for a single look had told her that Ariane would speak
no more on the subject of her own missing gifts.

“As a child I was stolen from my Norman
parents and sold into a seraglio,” Marie said as she sewed.
“By the time Dominic’s knights freed me, I was very
experienced at pleasuring men.”

“So you repaid the knights by becoming
their…”

“Whore,” Marie said without
embarrassment. “Aye. ’Tis what I know best. ’Tis
what I have been trained for since I was eight. That, and
sewing.”

Ariane blinked. “Trained to pleasure men?
Why? I thought that sex was by nature a pleasure for
men.”

“There is the pleasure of coarse bread and
water to feed hunger and slake thirst, and there is the pleasure of
honeyed peacocks’ tongues and dark, clear wine.”

Marie shook out the bodice she was working on,
tugged at a seam, and resumed sewing.

“For men who have the palate to savor
peacocks’ tongues,” Marie said, “a skilled woman
is a foretaste of heaven. Simon had known only coarse bread. For a
time, I had great power over him. In the end, though, his love of
his brother was stronger than his lust for me.”

“That is what you regret losing?”
Ariane asked against her will. “The power?”

“But of course. Why else would a woman
trouble to learn what pleases a man?”

“Simply to bring him pleasure,” Ariane
said.

As she spoke, Ariane remembered how she had held
and caressed Simon’s hot, violently aroused flesh. And then
she remembered something else. Her own feelings.

“And because it gladdens her to pleasure
him,” Ariane added, barely subduing a sensual shiver.

Smiling, shaking her head at Ariane’s
innocence, Marie stitched swiftly.

“You will never control your husband if you
lose control of yourself,” Marie said succinctly. “If
you would have the whip hand, you must know how to kiss and when to
bite, where to lick and how to suck, what to claw and when to
soothe, how to put him in your mouth and when to put him in your
body.”

Appalled by Marie’s matter-of-fact summation,
Ariane could think of nothing to say.

“Ecstasy is power, lady,” Marie said.
“’Tis the only power we women have over men. But for
that, men own all of worth in this world and we own nothing,
including our bodies.”

Marie’s cool assessment of the nature of what
passed between men and women horrified Ariane, but even worse was
her understanding that Marie had destroyed something in Simon as
surely as Geoffrey had destroyed something in Ariane.

Simon can no more entrust his
emotions to a woman than I can entrust my body to a man
.

Yet I must. I can no longer
bear the sad savagery of the past. It must end
.

It simply must
.

Marie looked up, saw Ariane’s expression, and
sighed.

“Never mind, lady. You haven’t the
temperament for controlling Simon through harem tricks.
You’re far too sensual.”

“I?” Ariane asked, startled.

“’Tis in your music,” Marie said.
“It tempts me to seduce you myself. But you have eyes only
for Simon and Simon is one of the few men I’ve ever met who
is worthy of fearing, as that asinine Geoffrey may
discover.”

“Geoffrey.” A malicious thought came to
Ariane. “Why don’t you seduce him?”

“I didn’t think you liked Geoffrey
enough to worry over his pleasure or lack of it.”

“I despise Geoffrey.”

“Ah.” Marie smiled with faint cruelty.
“I see.”

She tugged at a final knot, shook out the bodice,
and nodded with satisfaction.

“When Geoffrey tires of your handmaiden
tonight—”

“Geoffrey is with Blanche?” Ariane
asked, shocked.

“Aye. But only because I refused him, knowing
Simon’s dislike of him.”

“Is it Geoffrey who got Blanche with
child?”