Fairest Of Them All (29 page)

Trembling like a child in his arms, she snatched the shredded bodice together to shield her nakedness and turned her pleading eyes on Austyn. “Oh, please don’t be angry at Carey. Twasn’t his fault I enticed him to look at me. I swear I did.”

Her teeth began to chatter with delayed reaction. Tears welled in those extraordinary eyes, spilling over to scorch Austyn’s skin like droplets of boiling oil. His massive body shuddered as he felt the invisible wall around his heart collapse. How ironic that he should labor on it for twenty years only to discover too late that it had been forged not from stone, but ice! It had taken nothing more than the bittersweet warmth of Holly’s tears to melt it to a heap of useless rubble, leaving his heart raw and exposed.

He had to do no more than cast Carey an agonized glance. His man-at-arms gently shepherded his father and the others from the tower, leaving Austyn and his wife to their privacy.

Austyn ran his hands briskly over Holly’s icy arms, seeking to warm them. “Aside from trying to strangle you to death, did the wretch hurt you?”

Holly shook her head. “I shouldn’t have hit him. I know he’s naught but a frail old man, but he said such ugly things to me. When he began to untruss his hose . . .” She bowed her head, leaving Austyn to gaze helplessly down at the tender nape he had coveted for so long. “He’s been hiding in the courtyard each night listening ...” A fresh shudder rocked her shoulders. Her voice was so soft, ‘twas nearly inaudible. “He believed I was naught but a wanton harlot who would welcome his attentions . . . because I welcomed yours.”

Remorse staggered Austyn. Had he been standing, he would have fallen to his knees. Twas not his father who had reduced this proud, beautiful girl to cringing shame, he realized, but himself.

He tipped her delicate chin up, forcing her to meet his gaze. “You’re right You shouldn’t have hit him. You should have hit me.”

Holly’s face was no less lustrous than the candlelight, but as Austyn gazed down at her parted lips, the tears trembling on her dark lashes, he realized her physical beauty had never been the true threat to him. The passing seasons might mist her hair with silver and etch seams in the satin of her skin, but ‘twas the beauty of her spirit that would never fade. The beauty of her spirit that had shone through her ridiculous disguise to blind him with its radiance.

Twas that beauty he had sought to deny by seeking the supple grace of her body only in darkness. That beauty he had feared as he had propped pillows beneath her stomach and guided her face away from him, as if he could pretend she was another woman. Any woman at all. But the shimmering melody of her pleasure, the arch of her slender spine, the milky nape where he had longed to press his kisses, had always belonged to Holly.

His Holly. Generous and stubborn and fiercely protective of those she loved. And brave. Braver than any warrior he had faced on the battlefield. Brave enough to bash a rapacious madman upside the head with a lute. Brave enough to defy her papa when he sought to force her to a fate not of her making. Brave enough to offer her body as a sacrifice to his own selfish lust

His remorse was but a pale shadow of another emotion, an emotion he had believed buried forever when he had laid his mother to rest in the rich Welsh earth. An emotion both tender and tremulous, yet possessed of the power to topple kingdoms and tempt a man to risk his soul for just one night to savor its priceless wonders.

A blade of irony twisted in Austyn’s gut As long as he’d stubbornly clung to the notion that he could never love Holly, he’d been free to keep her for his wife.

Holly stiffened as her husband’s arms slipped away from her. She hugged herself in a vain attempt to duplicate his warmth. “You’re going now, aren’t you? I made it too bright and you’re going away.”

But instead of seeking the door, he moved to the table to pour a stream of wine into a silver goblet with leisurely grace. He eyed the glowing tapers with satisfaction, then frowned. “Where are all the flowers? Aren’t there supposed to be flowers in here?”

Holly winced with belated guilt “They were making me sneeze,” she lied, “so I had Winifred take them away.”

Her bewilderment grew as he returned to the bed, slipping to his knees so that they faced each other on the turbulent sea of sable.

He lifted the goblet “A toast to my bride.”

His solemn expression touched a wistful chord in Holly’s heart Before she could give voice to her yearning, he was pressing the rim of the goblet to her lips. She drank deeply, savoring his honeyed homage as if her thirst for it could never be sated.

He drank in kind, then let the goblet roll from his fingertips to the floor. Cupping her face in his hands with a fierce tenderness that both beguiled and frightened her, he gazed deep into her eyes and said, “I worship thee with my body, Lady Holly of Tewks-bury.”

Austyn kissed her mouth.

At the first brush of his warm lips, Holly’s teeth stopped chattering. Dazed by delight, she thought she might have died and gone to heaven after all. Twas a miracle this, a mingling of spirit and flesh more intimate than all the earthy pleasures they’d shared in darkness.

A veil of tears blurred her vision as she realized what Austyn had just done. He had taken her to wife. Not some petulant stranger garbed in an outlandish disguise and a withered chaplet of bluebells, but she, Holly of Tewksbury, clothed in shredded damask, yet somehow as naked and vulnerable as Eve must have been when God first delivered her to Adam.

The ceremonial reverence of his kiss made her feel as fresh and pure as Eve before the fall. Twas as if his chivalrous gesture had restored both her lost innocence and her hope for the future. She wouldn’t have been surprised had she glanced in a mirror to discover the ugly marks left by his father’s fingers had faded away, washed clean by her husband’s regard.

Her cry of joy was muffled by his mouth as she threw her arms around his neck, binding him to her heart as she had longed to do for so long.

Austyn would have been content to remain thus forever—rocking Holly in his arms, sipping tenderly at her lips, pausing only long enough to murmur hoarse regrets and broken endearments into the rumpled silk of her curls.

Twas she who drew her mouth from his and began to nuzzle the sensitive skin at the base of his throat, she who slipped her hands beneath his tunic to sift her fingers through his chest hair.

Twas Austyn’s turn to gasp when those entrancing hands fluttered over his abdomen to seek the points of his hose.

He caught one of her wrists, bringing it to his lips to soften the impact of its brief bondage. “You don’t have to do this,” he murmured, unable to resist sampling the spot where the fragile tracing of veins pulsed beneath her skin. “ Tis not what I want”

The gentle press of her belly against his loins proved him a flagrant liar. “Perhaps ‘tis time you thought about what / want,” she said. “I should warn you that my papa always claimed me a very spoiled girl.”

Sensing that she needed to prove her own power after being rendered so powerless by his father’s attack, Austyn favored her with a crooked grin. “Then far be it for me to deny you.”

He sealed his pledge by guiding her hand back down to his hose and pressing her palm to the throbbing measure of his desire for her. A desire that had stubbornly refused to abate since the first moment he had laid eyes on her in the garden at Tewksbury. As she folded her lithe fingers around him, he threw back his head, gritting his teeth against a groan of ecstasy.

Austyn discovered with that single touch that he could deny her nothing. Not even when she fanned her hands over his shoulders, pushed him to his back, and began to undress him like a child. When he lay naked with only the plush sable to tickle his skin, he reached for her.

She drew away from him, her eyes sparkling like polished gemstones. “You may look, my lord, which is more than you allowed me, but you may not touch.”

He cocked his head to the side, entranced by her boldness. “You wouldn’t?”

A provocative smile spread across her face. “Watch me.”

The extravagant candlelight made watching her an unparalleled pleasure. Sitting up on her knees, she drew both cotte and chemise over her head. As she shook out her tousled curls, Austyn found himself giving fervent thanks that her hair hadn’t yet grown enough to shield those magnificent breasts from his gaze. His hands were already aching to caress her, to cherish each succulent swell and hollow of her flesh as he should have on their wedding night. He was only too eager to repay the debt he had incurred when he had robbed her of her virginity with such callousness.

But Holly had in mind a more diabolical reparation.

This time when he reached for her, she cast the velvet loops on the bedposts a glower of mock threat “Restrain yourself, sir, or I shall be forced to restrain you.”

He fell back among the pillows, his empty hands knotting into fists. “Dare I beg you for mercy, my lady?”

She grazed his lips with her own in a tantalizing caress just short of a kiss. “Don’t waste your breath.”

Austyn had never dreamed revenge could be so sweet Especially when that revenge was exacted with such exquisite care from his own willing body. Holly nuzzled his fevered flesh, only to return to his mouth after each thrilling foray, as if to gorge herself on a feast she had been denied for too long. When her ripe lips strayed to the taut planes of his abdomen, his hands caught in the coverlet, bunching great wads of it between his fingers.

She glided up his body, the softness of her breasts teasing his chest, and brushed his mouth with a kiss as artless and bewitching as a virgin’s. Austyn groaned his delight But it seemed that reprieve was only a prelude to a more delicious torture. For those same innocent lips drifted back down his quivering body and parted like the petals of a flower to enfold him.

Austyn did not seize the velvet bonds. He seized the bedposts themselves, squeezing until he was sure they would crack off in his hands.

“Sweet God in heaven, have mercy, woman!” he choked out, arching off the bed in an instinctive thrust that doubled both his torment and his pleasure. He survived her generous assault without shattering only by plotting in scrupulous detail his own sensual retaliation.

When Holly once again laid those delectable lips against his own, he kissed her with savage abandon, thrusting deep and hard with his tongue.

He had taught her only too well. She tugged at his lower lip with her teeth before murmuring, “Would you deny me, husband? Shall I beg your pardon and take my leave?”

A lance of pain speared Austyn’s heart. At the sudden somberness of his expression, the teasing light fled her face. She made no protest when he enveloped her in his arms and rolled her beneath him, molding her to his body as if God had fashioned them to fit that way.

“Stay,” he whispered hoarsely, knowing it was the last time he would ever entreat her to do so.

As Austyn bore her back against the mattress, Holly breathed a sigh of utter delight to be allowed the once forbidden luxury of wrapping her legs around her husband’s waist to coax him deep inside of her.

Austyn knew he had much to atone for, but this was both the sweetest and most excruciating penance he had ever endured. He cursed his own stubbornness for denying them the blessing of candlelight through all those dark nights. Twas sheer bliss to draw back and watch rapture flicker and dance across Holly’s exquisite face. To watch her creamy cheeks flush with rose and her cherubic lips part in half-gasps, half-moans that inflamed him beyond bearing. To flick his gaze downward and witness the primal splendor of her body arching to welcome each of his bold thrusts.

She was a beauty, aye, but for this one last night, she was his beauty. His bride. Enchanted by the mask of pleasure mellowing her features, he slipped a single finger into the slick valley above where their bodies were joined and applied a most delicate friction until her gasps escalated to panting whimpers and her eyes fluttered back in her head.

Those first shivery pulsations gloved him in ecstasy. He drove himself hard against the mouth of her womb, muffling his roar of sweet agony against her lips as the love of a lifetime spilled from his loins in a searing cascade.

The pearly pall of dawn hung over the chamber when Holly awoke to find the bed beside her empty. Her spirits plummeted as she believed for one desolate moment that the preceding night had been only a night like all the others, when Austyn took his pleasure, then took his leave with equal disregard.

Biting back a wistful sigh, she reached toward the hollow in the mattress where his big, virile body should have lain. A trace of warmth still lingered in the rumpled sheets. Her sigh escaped in a joyous sob of relief. Laughing aloud, she rolled into the hollow, tumbling and writhing with childish abandon, then buried her face in the pillow to breathe deep of Austyn’s masculine spice.

As she flopped to her back and gazed up at the wooden canopy, the silken threads of memory wove a shimmering tapestry before her eyes. Instead of fleeing her company after that first sweet convulsion of ecstasy, Austyn had pillowed her head on his chest and stroked her damp curls away from her face, hoarsely begging her forgiveness for all the nights he had abandoned her and vowing to make amends.

She’d lost count of the number of times he had sealed his pledge during the fleeting hours between midnight and dawn. Equally precious to her were those moments when sated exhaustion had seized them both and she had snuggled against his warm chest, savoring the delectable sensation of feeling both safe and adored. If she rolled away, he would scowl and mumble, then wrap his arms around her waist and drag her tight against him, bumping his chin on her head. She would smile a small, secret smile to learn he was possessive even in slumber.

Then would come the first sleepy stirrings of his loins against her rump, and the wondrous cycle would begin again.

Holly’s stomach gave a petulant growl. She sat up, wondering if Austyn had gone to seek some cheese and sausage so they might sate an appetite of a more mundane nature. The tapers had melted to squat nubs of wax. A faint chill clung to the air. She peeked over the edge of the bed to discover Austyn’s hose were missing, but his tunic still lay in a careless heap where she had cast it the night before.