For My Lady's Heart (35 page)

Though his size was a sore burn, she took him deep. No coupling she had
ever known to be like this. His unchaste kiss, his unchaste touch, his
breath a harsh sob at her ear; his weight on her and his penetration to the
very depth of her. Over and over she rolled and shoved herself wantonly
against him—and culmination came upon her like an ambush.

“God save!” she cried. Her back arched. Her body shuddered, beyond
command. She died as he did, in full ecstasy, lost and cleaving to him in
the flood.

She slept against Ruck’s chest, on the floor, turned to nestle with one
leg drawn up and her hips curving, her hand resting possessively on his
waist. Propped on his elbow, he watched the firelight play orange and rose
over her skin.

For as long as he remembered, ever when he discharged his seed, even from
the first of his marriage to Isabelle, he had come into his wits again with
his spirit borne down by melancholy. A nameless sorrow possessed him, a
presage and knowledge of loss.

He knew to expect it, but the expectation brought no remedy, only an
acceptance of something that God saw fit to impose on him. In his years
alone, when he had given in to his lusts in secret, the grief had sometimes
hardly left him from one trespass to the next, only abated by his vision of
his perfect lady and confession. Its durance was sometimes days and
sometimes only as long it took him to fall asleep, but ever the deep trist
was there in the afterward, as it was with him now.

Softly he moved his hand over her, a gentle stroke. With each breath he
could feel the tips of her breasts touch him. He could lower his lashes and
look at them, marvel among many marvels. Without her gowns and jewels, she
had a womanly shape, all roundness and long lines, not so coldly slender as
her close-cut fashionable robes made her appear, but sweetly pillowed and
cushioned, full ripe in life.

In his despair her comeliness made him think of how he would lose her. It
must be impossible; he could not imagine any future in which he would have
this moment again.

His finger trailed down into the shadow between them. He followed an odd
flaw in the satin of her skin, an irregular line from her merkin curls up to
her belly. He drew his fingertip downward, tracing another beside it, and
another. They were strangely feminine, faint and light, soft at the edges
like no scars he had ever seen in a wide experience of battle wounds. He
wondered at how she might have come by such ghostly marks, but the very idea
of questioning the Princess Melanthe on such a topic as her flaws made him
smile inside himself.

She would freeze him in his place. She would not understand him, that he
only wished to know more of her, nor believe that because she was not
perfect beneath her furs and silks and jewels, he loved her the more.
Arrogance and unexpected blemish, and such courage to ride with him alone.
Shameless and coy by turns, her marvelous blue-lilac eyes sulky with fear
that he was repelled by her appearance.

As he traced the marks, she caught his hand, folding up her leg up with a
quick move, as if to hide herself. Her eyes sprang open. “What art thou
about?” she asked sharply.

He locked his fingers into hers and leaned over, caressing her brow with
light kisses. “Inspecting thy great age and ugliness, wench.”

She brought his hand up, making him rest it on his own thigh, trapping it
firmly there over the black hose he still wore. “I’ve lost count of these
times thou hast called me wench. Thou moste be flayed alive to atone for
them all. It is a great tragedy.”

“Bassinger will make a woeful lay of lamentation, to remember me.”

She stared at the base of his throat, unsmiling. He regretted speaking of
Bassinger, bringing the world into their seclusion. To distract her, he
loosed his hand from her hold. He cupped her breast, caressing his thumb
over the dark rosy crown.

She drew in a swift breath. The shade of a frown hovered between her
brows. She slanted a look up at him.

“Thou hast lied to me, monk man. Thou art no abstinent from women.”

He shook his head. “I have told you troth, my lady, fore God.”

“Nay.” She rolled onto her back, gripping his wrist. “What of this manner
of—kissing and touching? Depardeu, where hast thou discovered such things?”

He lifted his eyebrows. “This?” He made a slow circle with his thumb.
“Lady, I have been married. A husband will touch his wife so.”

She gave him a look as offended as any scandalized abbess. “Mine did
not!”

Ruck tilted his head, resting his cheek on his fist. “Did he nought? Ne
cannought I say why, my lady, but that pleases me for to hearen.”

“And—did I not mean only—this—but thy ... unnatural kisses. I think me
only lewd gallants and carpet knights know of such perversions!”

He ceased his caress and lowered his eyes. She seemed truly agitated by
the transgression. To be sermoned by the Princess Melanthe, of all people,
made him think he must verily have been immoral to the worst degree of vice.

“Forgive me, my lady.” He set his mouth. “I thought— such a one as you,
wise in luf-amour—I thought me you would knowen these things, and like them.
Ne will I nought offend you so again, I swear it.”

She curled both her hands about his. “Nay, nay, thou mistakes me. I did—I
took pleasure, wee loo, how could I say thee I did not? But—” She turned her
face to him. “Where indeed hast thou learned them, if not from dissolute
women and harlots?”

“Ne haf I recourse to harlots.” He withdrew his hand, staring down at the
silken carpet between them. “I wit it from confession.”

“Confession!”

“Yea, lady.”

She sat up. “Priests I know who are full of impurity, but I did not think
they taught it in the church.”

“They ask—” He plucked at the nap of the carpet and looked up at her
sideways. “Do they nought ask questions of you, my lady?”

“Iwysse. Have I been idle, or proud, and suchlike?”

“No more than that?”

She hugged her knees. “Envious? Angry? Grasping? Gluttonous?” she
recited, and lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “Had I one would clatter and
carp that I adorned myself too fine, until I wearied of it, and had him
disappointed and another in his place.”

“Oh,” he muttered. He picked at the motley silk.

“They inquire of thee else?”

He scowled. “Yea. Of my lust.” He spread his fingers, rubbing them back
and forth over the nap. “They ask, haf I nought engaged in lecherous touches
and embraces—and when I say I haf nought, asks the confessor in another way,
haf I nought touched a woman on her breasts, or her body. And neither does
he trust me no more than you, my lady, when I say him nay, and asks again,
as if I had said yea, then did I nought touch her womb-gate and her merkin?
And did I nought kiss her there and on her teats, for to make her lewd? And
did I nought mount her unnaturally, as the beasts couple, or let her mount
onto me? And did I nought do it on a holy day?” He made a snort of misery.
“And then do I think of little else, I say you my lady, when I go out, but
what I might do if I had me a wife and might usen her.”

“Avoi,” she said softly, but he could hear mirth in her voice.

His jaw hardened. “So, if ye believe me—ne did I nought learn vice from
harlots.”

“Haps thou couldst teach them!” she suggested.

He lay back with a deep sigh, stuffing a cushion under his neck and
clasping his hands behind his head. She regarded him, and then reached up
and touched his bent knee.

“It is because they take measure of thy form and vigor, and cannot
conceive that a man like thee would be continent. So did that priest reckon
me for excess in adornment.”

He had not been perfectly continent, but he was not going to tell her
more of the grinding inquisitions he received on the matter, not when the
worst crime she was required to acknowledge appeared to be excess adornment.

“Is true, then,” she asked, “that those things be not sin in marriage?”

“Some say yea, and some nay.” He remained staring between his knees.

“Thou hast studied much on this matter?”

He nodded.

She rocked back on her hips and laughed. “Forsooth, we shall send thee to
confession full oft, monk man, for thy further instruction!”

He let his gaze wander up to the window, to the chimney— to her, as she
sat curled with the warm firelight on the curve of her back. He smiled
slowly. “As God and my liege lady command me.”

The first thing Melanthe knew was the roar of a voice and the chime of
rings sliding as the bedcurtains swept open and gray light poured over her.

“Baseborn whore! ”

A monstrous black outline flashed, and something came hurtling at her.
Through the blankets a blow smashed into her neck and shoulder.

The black flashed again. She heard a shout, the thing came at her, and
suddenly another weight bore down atop her, between her and the assault. A
sound like an ax on wood cracked through her head. The weight on her jerked,
and jerked again under another hit. Through a daze she realized that it was
Ruck above her, his body pressing her down as someone beat him, raining
blows on his naked back.

“She is dead!” the voice bellowed. “Get off the strumpet, ye idle
whoreson! I haf slayed her!”

With each blow Ruck’s body jarred, and his breath made a low sharp grind.
But he held, shielding her, his arm locked over her face while the shocks
hit him and the bed, wild strikes sometimes high on his shoulders and
sometimes low, sending quakes of violence through to her legs.

“High morn is it!” their attacker howled. “Rise, boy, or look ye to losen
your hide! Thy commoner is killed; base whore thou took to wive, and I’ll
slay her bastards to clean the nest! She was unworthy of you! Adaw, the
swords await.” His weapon cracked down again. “Up! Will ye jape a bloody
corpse? Get up!”

The hits had lost a little of their energy. Ruck lifted himself. He
raised his arm; she saw a grizzled man beside the bed—the descending wooden
sword whacked into the palm of Ruck’s hand. He held the weapon off and
jerked it from their assailant’s double grip.

Ruck rolled away from her. He cast back the bedcurtains and rose, hurling
the wooden sword. It struck the open door and woke a thunder of echoes in
the spiraled stair beyond.

“Cease off!” Stride-legged and naked, his back reddened by beating, Ruck
glared at the savage old man. “Keep ye, that ye trespass no further!”

The man didn’t even glance at Ruck. “Stinking bitch-clout, does thou
breathe still?” He came for Melanthe, gray and powerful, his beard an
untamed mat. “Hey and ware, I’ll soon strangle thee!”

Ruck sprang to prevent him, ramming him back, holding him with an arm
across his chest. “Nay, sir, ‘tis folly! Heed to me!”

“Heed ye!” The man fought, big and strong enough in spite of his years to
force Ruck to arm’s length, but none of his struggle could break him free.
“Heed ye, ye pillock, whilst ye degrade your mother, God assoil her! Whilst
corrupt your father’s line with common blood!” He spat toward Melanthe.

“Enow! Cease off this blundering!” Ruck caught him by the shoulders. With
a grunt of effort he forced the old man to his knees. “Abase you!”

The man made wild efforts to rise, but Ruck held him down. “I have no
children,” Ruck said fiercely. “Ye knows this. I haf said you many times.
Now listen to me. Isabelle is dead years agone. My lady’s grace is the
Princess Melanthe, of Monteverde and Bowland. And my wife. I would you wist
it clearly, and repeat my words, that I trow I may release you.”

The old man ceased his combat. Melanthe clutched the sheet and her hand
over her bruised shoulder. He turned pale, lifting his face to her.
“Bowland?” he said, his voice suddenly atremble. “Lo, the daughter of Sir
Richard?”

Ruck let him go. The old man’s body shook. As he bowed down his head to
his knees and began to weep, Ruck looked quickly toward Melanthe. “My
lady—are ye hurt?”

Her arm throbbed, but the quilts had muffled the impact of the sword. She
was more stunned than in pain. Wordlessly she shook her head. He turned,
kneeling to embrace their groaning attacker, holding him tight, as if he
were a child.

“Who is this?” Melanthe exclaimed.

“Sir Harold.” He did not say more, but gently urged the other man up.
“Come, ye mote depart anon, sir.”

Sir Harold pulled himself away. “Sir Richard? You have wed Sir Richard,
boy?”

Ruck touched his shoulder and indicated Melanthe. “His daughter,” he
murmured. “The countess.”

The grizzled knight twisted and pulled at his hair, possessed with
frantic mumbling. He seemed to lose his strength, falling with his forehead
to the floor, begging mercy, muttering in confusion of her father and
Bowland and killing. Melanthe watched Ruck try to coax him away with no
success.

“Come forward, Sir Harold,” she said curtly. “Now speak plain words as a
good trusty knight, or take thyself off.”

The sharp command seemed to reach his scattered wits. He stopped his
moving and mumbling, and crept to the bedside, his scarred hands knotted
together. He raised his face to her. “My noble lady’s grace,” he said, “I
haf a demon!”

“Yea, that is clear to me, Sir Harold.”

“My lady,” he said hopelessly, “me thinks I mote slay myseluen, to kill
it.”

“Nay, thou wilt not. Nill I nor Lord Ruadrik give thee leave. ‘Tis
against God, Sir Harold. And would deprive my lord of his rights to aid and
counsel of thee.” She softened her voice. “When the demon tries to seize
thee, thou moste remember to ask God for counsel and solace, for He comes to
the aid of those who wish to do good and act faithfully.”

The old man gazed at her, dawning adoration in his face.

“Blessed be you, my lady. Oh, my lady, ye be the wisest and worthiest of
the world’s kind.”

“This is not my wisdom, but my honored father’s, God give his soul peace.
I only mind thee of thy duty.”

Sir Harold still wept, but he gave a little sigh. “‘Gentle lady, truly
the Lord God blessed this house on the day your lady’s grace wed my lord. It
was the unworthy bitch-mare I designed to slay, to keepen clean my lord’s
noble blood.”

“God has saved thee from that mortal sin,” Melanthe said. “Take thy near
escape to heart.”

He bowed his head. “My lady.”

“Lord Ruadrik will adjudge thy punishment for striking me, but if it be
heavier than a day in the tumbrel, then I will try to intercede for thee.”

“Gr’mercy, my lady,” he said humbly. “I beg my lady’s favor.”

“Thou hast my favor. Leave me now.” She held out her hand from beneath
the sheet to be kissed. He reached for her so quickly that for a moment she
regretted the move, but he took her fingers gently, only the rough pads of
his palms touching her as he made a courteous gesture of bending over her
hand.

“God preserve your lady’s grace.” He rose, falling back from the bedside
with his shoulders squared and his head lifted. Ruck had stood all the time
beside him, as if ready to drag him out at any moment. Sir Harold gave him a
deep bow, pronounced himself at his lord’s mercy whenever he should be
pleased to devise a just punishment, and strode from the room.

Immediately Ruck closed the door and barred it. Without speaking, he took
up his shirt, pulling it over his head, covering the fiery marks on his
skin. For the first time Melanthe became aware of rain that pelted against
the window glazing and the cold dimness of the room.

“Depardeu!” She sank back into the pillows. “What next in this place?”

“Ye ne are nought hurt, my lady?”

His cool tone warned her away from japing. Her shoulder throbbed
painfully, but she held the silken quilt up close, watching him. “I live.”

“He is formaddened, my lady,” Ruck said. “Ne can he help himseluen when
the fits are on him.”

“Who is he?”

“My master in arms. In his prime he tooken a blow to his head that lay
bare the brain, and since then has he no command of his rage. But he is a
great knight, my lady, and taught me the best that I know of fighting.”

“The secret of thy prowess. Thou dost fight like a madman because a
madman instructed thee.”

He shrugged. “Peraventure, it may be.” He bent over a chest and took
breeches from it, dressing himself without service. “Sir Harold esteems him
gentle blood and bobbaunce above all things. Isabelle he despised, though
ne’er did I bring her here. Only to hear her name arages him. He would haf
had me taken a princess to wife.”

With a little twist of his mouth and a glance at Melanthe, he
acknowledged what he’d said, as if he’d just heeded his own words.

“Then I shall crush him with my magnificence, so as to gladden him,” she
said.

He took clothes from the chest and shut the lid. “Ye delighted him
greatly, my lady, with your noble talking.”

“It is a talent of mine, noble talking.”

“Witterly,” he agreed. “Enow to make a man’s head spin.”

“That is the purpose of noble talking. It has saved many a prince from
certain death.”

He rested one foot on the ornamented and embellished settle, lacing his
hose. The gear was of gray silk, a fitted tunic embroidered in black and set
with jet stones, trimmed in sable fur. She was pleased to see that amid his
many-hued retainers, he alone went uncolored. It set him apart as no
fantastical finery could, and did his comeliness no hurt at all, but
underscored it.

“Will ye rise, lady?” he asked when he was done. “Or sleep away all your
lifetime?”

She slipped down and pulled the sheet over her head. From beyond the
white warmth she heard him move. The door bar made a grating slide.

She sat up. “Wait.”

He stood at the door, his hand upon it. Melanthe held the blankets up to
her.

“Ne do I wish thee to go,” she said abruptly.

He made a slight bow and waited at the door, as if for an order.

“Ne do I wish thee to
go
,” she repeated.

“My lady, they expect me in hall. Long haf I been absent, and many
matters will await.” He scowled down at the hasp. “Though it seem a strange
place to you, I am master of it.”

She understood a lord’s duty as well as she understood how to breathe.
But some imp inside her—it did not even seem to be herself—made her plump
her body on the mattress like a spoiled child. She turned over with her back
to him.

“When you rise, my lady,” he said, “I will be below.”

She heard the creak of the door and rolled over, flinging a pillow at
him. It hit his shoulder. As he turned, she hurled another that struck him
full in the chest.

She dropped down into the bed and yanked the coverings over her, curling
facedown, her hands gripped together under her chin. She heard the door
close. The sound of the boards beneath the carpets traced his coming to the
bed. Then she was miserable and angry, not even knowing what to say, beyond
a bare demand for his company and his indecent embraces. Too low to sink, to
ask for what she had always denied; and too terrible if she should be
refused, chosen over, and he went to his minstrels that he loved.

It was not witful to feel so. She herself would have gone to her duties
first. She said into the mattress, “Thou art discourteous. Thou hast not
even bade me good morn ere thou depart.”

“Good morn, then.”

“Good morn. And I hope thou dost break into boils and die.”

She felt his hand on her back, then both hands sweeping aside the sheet
and kneading her bare shoulders. He buried his face in the nape of her neck,
his weight bearing down the mattress. With a whimper of relief, she turned
up to him, ignoring the pain where he pressed her bruised shoulder, eager
for his kisses.

“Ne do I hope for it,” she said against his skin, against his cheek rough
with new beard. “Ne do I. I would perish without thee.”

“Melanthe.” His fingers gripped her. “My sovereign lady,” he whispered,
and gave her freely what she wanted, without the asking, company and
unchaste embraces and his body deep in hers, until she perished another way,
blind with delight.

Ruck felt her sleep—always sleeping, this wife of his—this drowsy
miracle, slumbering in his arms as if she were in some enchantment. He
pressed his cheek to her loosened hair. The melancholy fathomed him, grief
and fate encompassing him while he held on to her.

He waited for it to pass. He listened to the rain and thought of her, how
she masked and dazed him. In her easy arrogance she did not confound him;
nay, not her commands or noble talking. She was meant to be so, born to be
so—it was only what was right.

But she threw pillows at him. And sand. A woman full grown, as old as he,
a princess in one look and a looby the next. He had known court ladies to
play the child, to pose and flutter and speak in small voices for to draw
the men, but she was so unreken and left-handed at it, and so abrupt. He
would have thought her more smooth and artful in dalliance. In good faith,
he was more comely with love-sporting himself when he tried.

Sometimes it was as if there were another soul inside her. Or by chance
it was all false leading, to mock him. He had allowed her in. carried her
through the woven wood: she knew Wolfscar now. She would go out, speak of it
to the world, jape at him and rob him of what was his. There was only Sir
Harold left alive to say that he knew Ruck without nay or doubt. One mad old
man to bring in favor of Ruck’s claim, against the richest abbey in the
northwest. And all hope of Lancaster’s esteem and support with the king
lost.

Yet she was so soft and slight in his embrace, her arms about him, as if
he were her sole defense against any peril. He had shown her through the
frithwood, but she had not slipped so quietly through the thickets that he
had raised about his heart. She burned them down to find him, and then left
him smoking ashes.

It was too late. She was here. He was at her mercy, as he had been from
the moment he had beheld her.

“You have no choice, if you hold any hope for this sister of yours,”
Allegreto said, low and harsh. He leaned across the table. “You’re a
bungler, Cara. You’re hopeless. You haven’t got the nerve to work alone.”

In the miserable little alehouse, the light through a barred window fell
on his face, making a mask of him, an ancient pagan statue in the shadow of
some ruin. Smoke from the open fire in the floor permeated every crevice and
flavored her ale. She drank a sip, forcing herself to swallow the sour brew
without looking down. It was cloudy and cold, like everything in this
godforsaken northern land. Outside it snowed, when it was not raining. She
put down the vessel and stuffed her hand back in the muff he had bought for
her.