Ondine (18 page)

“Witch!” he raged out in return, but she had pelted herself into such a fury that she found herself the aggressor. She leaned against him, fingers clutched into fists that she pounded against his chest. “How dare you! By all the saints, how dare you!” Surely she sounded like a fishwife or a shrew; she had no thought to care. “You bring me to a place where your mistress speaks freely of your fascinating endowments, hangs on you like an accoutrement, and laughs in my face! Then you dare to—”

She broke off, horribly aware that she was atop him and that she had now lost more than one panel of her once beautiful gown, the silk having caught beneath him. Her legs were bare, her hips were bare, and only one shoulder carried a sign of having been clad. She was all but naked, and astraddle over him.

And she was no longer pelting him because he held her wrists. And his eyes, demon eyes, fire eyes, were upon her with amusement—and with something more, a night glitter, a primal glitter, that somehow echoed the pounding of her heart, the fury of rage and tension that sped throughout her.

“No!” she gasped again, jerking her wrists to elude him. She struggled to rise, but then shrieked with panic when she realized that he had only released her wrists to encircle her waist and send her plummeting down to the mattress once again, his prisoner. She sought to injure him no longer, but tossed madly and futilely against his weight and power.

“Let me—up!”

“Oh, nay! Nay! We’ve got to talk about this, my love! Am I to understand that you are so vastly annoyed because Anne saw fit to speak about my—endowments?”

“Let me go! I could care less about your—endowments!”

“Ah, because you prefer the king’s?”

“Nay! Just let—”

His head lowered, and though she tossed her own, his mouth found hers. His torso covered and held the nakedness of her chest; his fingers moved to her cheeks, stroking her chin as he kissed her. His mouth encompassed hers. His tongue flicked against her teeth with a persistence and strength that sapped her own. Warmth flooded her, and a feeling that was sweeter, more potent than any wine she had ever tasted. Ah, beyond that… it felt as if she had stumbled upon a great unknown, a dark uncharted voyage into a strange paradise where she might stumble, and yet could not, for he was her guide. He filled her mouth, tasted and plundered there, and she forgot that she must protest against him. She lay still, aware only of the taste of him, the texture of his tongue as it raked against the crevices of her mouth, leaving the most delicious feeling there, drowning her with sweetness and with force.

He drew away from her, and still she could not move, not thinking to fight him. No humor remained in his eyes, just the darker thing, haunted and tense. His knuckles played over her cheek, swept like air over her throat, then between the valley of her breasts. Once more his dark head bent, and his mouth closed over her breast, the tongue that had been so potent in its play upon her mouth now delivering a sensation so sweet that she cried out. Her body strained with shock, with pleasure. Just the tip of his tongue, stroking again and again, over the tip of her breast, with all the warmth of his mouth around it. And then the force was harder, a suctioning, a caress, drawing rivulets of flame from her, until she did not know where the sensation came from, it had invaded her so. Nor did she understand the soft sounds that came from her, the compulsion that drew her fingers to his hair, to lock there, to find fascination in the thick brown locks.

His teeth held her nipple, gently grazed it, released it, but she was not free of his touch, for his palm moved over her, his eyes burning her with a fire of sensation. His hand, his fingers, traveled over her, her waist, her hip, her belly, her thigh. His voice, too, was encompassing, husky, deep, male, a play upon all the things awakened inside her.

“Ah, Countess, never have I quite realized what bounty I did take from that hangman’s noose. What beauty…” His lips touched upon her belly, and his whisper was so warm against her flesh. “Be there a comparison of endowments, I would well call yours the finest ever fashioned …”

Once again his kiss fell. His fingers strayed in her hair, and she floated in that drugged state that told her this was worth dying for; this was the stuff of ballads, of history’s great passions, of—

Comparisons!

Oh, God! That he should think to compare her to that viperous Anne and to a host of others.

“Oh!” she screamed aloud in fury, wrenching his hair in her grasp, shoving her knee against his endowments. Quite startled, he grunted in pain—and she was free.

“You! You, my lord Warwick Chatham, are nothing but a giant rotting codpiece! You made a promise to me! You—”

“I am what?” he demanded, and his tone seemed laced now with fury as he threw his legs over the bed and rose to face her. “I made a promise to you! Well, what is it, then, my love? Homage to the king, but not to the lord of your own manor?”

“Oh, stop this prattle about the king! You are—oh!”

He was on his feet, not touching her, but grasping the tattered remainder of her gown, and then she wore nothing. She could not escape the determined glitter of his eyes. No anger now could save her, and so she sought belatedly to plead his good graces. “Warwick! Nay, your temper—”

“Is sorely vexed. Just as my—endowments are injured by your less than gentle touch! Yet we’ll ease them of such stress, shall we not?”

“Warwick—”

She backed herself once again to the wall, and that was where he pinned her, her hands held in his own. She expected fury and found it in the first onslaught of his kiss, one that conquered and bruised … but did not, could not, remain brutal. Even in searing panic and desperation she felt again the call to her senses, to all her aching, yearning excitement and desire. To her love. Again the nectar claimed her, the honeyed feeling, so alive and vibrant. It made her tremble, made her hunger …

Her fingers slowly, slowly curled around his. She did not know when it began, but her lips sought his touch as surely as he gave it. Again it seemed as if the pulse of the tide beat within her, as if only the rush of the sea ruled her heart and mind. Her head fell back as he raised her in his arms, her arms entwined around his neck, and there were no words between them, only the golden determination in his eyes and the drugged daze in her own as he returned her to the bed. She thought he would come to her arms; he did not. He shed his boots and his velvet coat, then paused and knelt at the side of the bed.

And then he took her foot into his hand.

He held it first, as if it were a fine porcelain figure. Then he stroked the arch, and the heat of his kiss glazed her toes, an exotic feeling, one that teased, one that burned.

That elusive, maddening touch continued—the stroke of his fingers, nails, the caress of his kiss, the spear of his tongue— taunting, evoking along the length of her. She did not think that she breathed the air; she just lay there, spellbound and sated with each new experience of his touch. The movement of his fingers, his kiss, slowly finding erotic places—the back of her knee, along her inner thigh, the down juncture where her limbs met …

A gasp, a whisper, escaped her. A soft cry that she must, must escape his intimate caress, one that blinded her, elated her, made her feel as if her entire body ran rampant with a hot honeyed elixir. She tried so hard to twist from him, yet succeeded only in curling to him, abetting him with the swift and sudden discovery of desperate passion. She knew not where she was, or even who; she did not know herself at all, not this creature who cried out, who writhed and twisted, moaning inarticulate things. She did not know the woman who grasped at his hair, bringing his kiss at last to her lips, bestowing delicious pleasure with her tongue, which nipped and sought and sank, deeper and deeper into the wonder …

Suddenly she was bereft. Cold and bereft. He was gone. Dazed, she opened her eyes to the glowing candlelight. He was not gone. His eyes were on her, fire in that light. His features, shadowed, dark and tense. She closed her eyes, trembling as reality came to her. She loved him… and she wanted him, she wanted … this.

She felt his fingers first, the tips, just streaking along her thigh. Instinct brought her to tense against that pressure; he did not note that last defense of something she held moral. He but leaned down to capture her lips, and the pressure of his knee came between hers, the wonder of his strength enwrapped her. His touch, his warmth, returned her to that mystical plain where she could seek nothing but satiation to all the liquid, burning hunger that rioted throughout her being…

She could not have desired any man more, yet neither could she prevent the jagged shriek of agony that escaped her lips when he moved into her at last, a knife that split and tore. She heard him emit a startled oath, and pain helped fuel the anger that speared her, even with his touch. Tears stung her eyes—he had truly thought her so hastily involved with the king, or elsewhere, prior to their marriage. She choked on her tears and could say nothing against him; she pressed her palms desperately against his chest, but she could not move him. And even as the pain blazed and then slowly faded, she heard him again, not in oaths or in question, but in tender phrases, gentle, husky words, words that eased, that lulled …

That seduced again… seduced with the movement of his hands, his kiss, his stroke upon her breasts, seduced so thoroughly that the ragged moment of agony was quickly but a distant memory.

She would not think till later that he was but the most expert of lovers. That he but knew the trade very well …

Now he was a part of her, filling her with bursting wonder, as if he entered every pore of her body. He urged her with whispers, with his fingers cupped about her buttocks, caressing her breasts, lifting her once again. It was a dance, a thing of beauty … his shoulders, slick and gleaming golden in the candlelight, his eyes a fire of wanting her … He was beautiful, taut, sinewed, a work of art, a man …

This was the wonder, the sense of mercury and excitement, that which she had yearned for long before she knew—this sizzling heat that seared the body, made her blaze and soar, ache and yearn… explode—with a cry from her lips, a groan from his. Shattering, volatile… Oh, sweet Lord! It was crystal magic, enwrapping her, caressing and emcompassing her with the seed of his body. She had something of him … Oh, she had never, never suspected that such pleasure could be on this earth!

It took moments, long moments, for Ondine to drift down from that pinnacle of sensation. Yet when she did, she could not look at him. She could not face the wanton display of passion that had seized not him, but herself. She could not believe that she— certainly no fool!—had fallen into his arms … arms that had so recently held another and would most probably do so again.

Without a word she buried her face into the pillow.

And it seemed now, too, that Warwick had nothing more to say. She felt him shift; through webs of her hair she saw him rise, still splendid in taut muscular nakedness, and extinguish the candles. She felt him lie down beside her, near, but not touching.

Time ticked by. She lay as tense as stone. How much time? she wondered. She dared to shift, still hiding behind the mantle of her hair. Did he sleep?

He did not. His eyes were on the ceiling, far above him. In the darkness she could not read his eyes. She saw only that his features seemed grim; there was a sense of the ease of the wine about him now. His fingers were laced behind his head, and he seemed to stare at that ceiling in deep thought, pensive and severe.

She froze as he moved, determined to feign sleep.

He rose above her and pulled the hair gently from her face. She kept her eyes tightly closed, and whether he believed she slept or not she did not know.

He shifted again. She felt the covers being pulled warmly around her. And she felt his weight as he lay down beside her again.

And though she didn’t see him, she was certain that he had regained his original pose; that he was staring at the ceiling again, and that his eyes would be troubled with secrets and mystery; that his jaw would be hard, pensive …

Why?

She ached; she yearned to know. She longed to reach to him, yet she could not. She didn’t dare give more of a love than she could receive in turn.

She had her own grave problems to solve, she reminded herself sharply. She forced herself to call to mind the horrid things he had said to her—that she was nothing but a commoner, saved for his use. In time she must escape him—prove herself loyal, regain her birthright. He had taken much of her this night, but he had learned nothing of the king’s promise, nor would he.

None of these things could help her; none of them could hold her thoughts, her mind, or her heart. She was changed; he had changed her. She could never forget that her virginity had been shed upon this bed, with violence and tenderness, fury and laughter and—longing.

And she simply couldn’t stop thinking of Anne, thinking of her with a furious loathing. If the lady dared speak of Warwick’s endowments again, Ondine was quite certain she would tear her to shreds.

The lady Anne, it seemed, had the greater claim.

I am his wife! Ondine thought with anguish.

His gallows’ bride …

Taken by him at last, and never, never to be the same again.

Sunlight was pouring into the room when she awoke, streams that danced from the panes upon her. Memory of the night past came upon her in a warm rush, and still dazed with sleep, she smiled, smug and pleased with that memory. Warwick! Ah, memory of his face, his touch, was all that came to her with that first light. Had he been beside her, she might well have sighed with the complacent pleasure of a kitten and cast herself awestruck against him.

But he was not beside her, and as she opened her eyes more fully, she saw him at last.

He stood by the window, completely dressed down to buckled shoes and plumed hat. His foot rested upon the rung of a chair, his thumbs locked into breeches, and he stared darkly and pensively out upon the brightness of the day.

Her heart first soared with the sight of him, then seemed to shatter like the surf against rocks as the grimness of his taut features worked into her mind.

She drew her covers up; she was uneasy, though she knew not why. Her smile slowly faded just as he turned to her.

“Warwick—”

He doffed his hat and bowed low, without mockery this morning, yet with something far worse: the greatest reserve, the most chilling distance.

“My lady, I do apologize for my most atrocious manners of last eve. 1 fear I drank too deeply, and too well, and matters here are tense at best. Do forgive me.”

She stared at him blankly, unbelievingly. Then she raised her own shield of ice to combat the fever of pain, and twisted with her covering so that her back was to him.

“Just do get out of here, please.”

He did not move; he hesitated. Then he came to her back, and she shivered as she felt the line his finger drew there.

“I didn’t know, er … I did not suspect …”

She swung around, staring at him. “Know what?”

He grated out some impatient sound, a barely articulate oath. “For God’s sake, girl, I married you off the gallows!”

“And … ?” she demanded warily, her temper instinctively growing as she sought his meaning.

“I did not expect to find a maid, untouched, but a woman of certain experience.”

“What?
Oh!”
She forgot that he was completely clad, that her covers were her only defense, and sat to throw her pillow hard against him. He caught it with a mere tightening of his mouth.

“My God, you’d come from Newgate—”

“Newgate! Ah, yes, my lord of Chatham! I came from Newgate. How dare you assume that all those wretches dragged to that horrid place are whores, since they be debtors or beggars—”

“Or liars, cutthroats, and thieves? Forgive what was stolen, Countess, by a drunken boor; had I known you were among the great virtuous masses of Newgate, I’d never have erred. And then, Countess, there was the matter of the king, you see. You swayed and laughed and teased with him like a mistress well versed in the arts.”

Retrieving her covers, Ondine lowered her head. “Get out!”

He bowed low to her once again, and she hated him for it and for the vibrant sarcasm in his words.

“As 1 said, my manners were atrocious. I shall endeavor, madam, to improve them in the future.”

He turned then and strode to the door, but paused there. “I’ve business with the king this day and the next, yet now that I am here, I’ve no wish to stay longer than I must. Be prepared to leave, for I intend to cut short our stay as much as possible.”

He opened the door and closed it behind himself. Ondine stared after him, still incredulous. Tears burned her eyes, and she dug her fingers into the sheets, fighting them. She would never, never understand him. Never in a thousand years …

She turned about, burying her head into the pillow as a sob tore from her. How could she have been so foolish as to forget? Forget that his reputation was a rage about court, that it seemed that one woman was but the same as another to him.

She pushed her face from the pillow at last. “Bastard! Bastard!” she hissed, miserably clenching her eyes together. She had allowed herself to care …

She rose, shivering as she rushed naked to the pitcher and bowl. She splashed water brutally against her face.

The king had suggested she leave him, and leave him she surely would. Newgate whore, indeed! She was a duchess in her own right, and, by God, she would prove it and he would eat the dust that flew from her heels.

She paused then, shivering once again. No. He had saved her life in a devil’s bargain she still did not understand. She was in his debt. She would pay that debt, for it was owed. But when it was paid in full, she would depart as swiftly as the wind.

Warwick spent the day in the king’s chambers, listening as advisors warned Charles about the fear of Papists, still riding high in England. The king’s face was set, for it was his brother, James, heir to the crown, whom they attacked.,

Charles despised intolerance; he had a leaning toward Catholicism himself—yet a penchant for his throne that kept him ever wary and prudent. As his maternal grandfather—the great Henry IV—had once claimed,“Paris for a Mass!” Charles would remain a Protestant king to remain a king.

“Leave off with this endless debate!” Charles said wearily. “We’ve graver matters at stake!”

And so the business of the kingdom turned to finance, another endless debate, for Charles was nearly always in need of funding.

Warwick lost touch with the voices around him. He sat at apparent attention; he was nothing but a marble presence. His thoughts—remorse, shame, hunger, and longing—consumed him, and he feared he would never escape the tangle of emotion. She haunted him more now that the scent and sight and sound and touch of her were real in his memory, so very real that he could see all of her, know the detail, the beauty …

He had all but attacked her. His wife. The wretched ragamuffin he had plucked from the streets—the woman he had sworn to protect, but never love. Protect! Dear God, from what? Had he gone insane? What had he expected to prove here? Hardgrave was in attendance, as well as the lady Anne. Yet how could Anne whisper to Ondine in the halls of Chatham Manor? How could Hardgrave?

Hardgrave was so near, a neighbor. There were hidden chambers and false doors within Chatham.

But the hounds would not accept a stranger in the hall, nor could Warwick imagine Hardgrave, with his bulk, scampering through the halls to whisper to his wife!

His head was pounding. He had wronged Ondine; wronged her gravely. She had been as chaste as the snow, yet would be no more when he released her from this travesty into which he had summoned her.

Could he release her? He did not think that he could …

God rot it all! But he had never felt this passion so deep, it ruled all thought, dulling the mind and tricking the actions! This envy, this jealousy … this absolute sense of possession. It was a painful thing. It tore at the gut and the heart and the soul, and he wished fervently that he’d never seen her face, never felt her spell entrap him.

Think, man, it was time to watch and judge. Anne was as jealous as a spiteful little cat, pleading, cajoling, threatening. Hardgrave and Warwick were keeping their distance, like great wary bears. Hardgrave watched Ondine with hunger lacing his eyes, but what man did not? It had all been worthless. All that he had managed was a time of agony, seeing his wife the center of endless desire— his own! Taking her …

But he could not do so again. He was no rapist, no seducer of innocents. Nor did he dare love her, though love her he did. She didn’t know his bargain, but it had been sealed in his heart. She had been bait for a killer, and for that she was due his greatest debt, her life and her freedom.

Two more nights of misery.

No, there was endless misery. For at Chatham she would still be near.

But she would have her own chamber. He could not go to her again; it would not be fair.

Two more days. Days of watching her laugh and smile and charm everyone around her. Days of feeling the coldness of her gaze when it fell upon him. Days of watching Anne eye her in constant and dangerous speculation, while Hardgrave stared after her with lust and cunning in his eyes.

On a sudden thought Warwick made the announcement, the next day, of his coming heir at court. Charles and Catherine were thrilled.

Anne narrowed her cat’s eyes furiously.

Hardgrave appeared to plot all the more.

Ondine stared at him, as if her eyes were glittering steel swords and she would gladly use them to disembowel him.

But nothing happened, except that his temper grew shorter as he tried to sleep upon the settee, tried not to think that just beyond the door she breathed and slept, that beneath her nightdress she was warm and supple and curved for a man’s pleasure, that she was a woman of grace and passion that raged deeper than even he had imagined …

On the third day they left before the sun had risen. Warwick was atop the carriage with Jake; Ondine was alone inside of it.

They reached Chatham, and Warwick found his life ever more miserable. He could not leave her at night, for it was here that she had claimed the whisperer came to her, calling her.

And she was so cool, so aloof and polite, cordial, moving about with the rustle of her skirts, the scent of her perfume, her chin held high, her eyes sweet enigmas. She spoke as if they were acquaintances, and she kept her distance most serenely. She laughed and smiled and chatted—with Justin and Clinton. Mathilda came to adore her more and more.

Warwick grew more moody, more reserved, stiff and straight and cold as ice … ice that housed a fire. He could not break the spell, change the beguilement. Again, he felt something in him simmer, and it was dangerous, so dangerous …

From Justin, Ondine learned that Anne could be a jealous beauty, though she collected lovers herself as another woman might add gowns to her wardrobe. She had assumed—after Genevieve’s death and the demise of her husband—that she would marry Warwick, though Justin stated with laughter that Warwick, had he not been so strange with brooding sorrow and anger after his first wife’s death, would not have married Anne anyway.

They’d been back at Chatham a week. She walked with Justin toward the stables as they spoke. Ondine had no permission to ride, yet she enjoyed seeing the horses where they stood in the fields, or in their stalls. Jake, she knew, would not be far behind her, but not close enough to hear her words, and so she easily plagued Justin with questions that he didn’t seem to mind answering.

“You didn’t know my brother long before your marriage, did you?” Justin asked her, his bright eyes alive with laughter.

“No,” she admitted, but told him no more. With a winning smile she placed a hand upon his arm. “So you see, dear Brother, I need all your help to understand my lord of Chatham.”

That much was true; she longed to understand the man, to discover what role she played, and then leave!

“Ah, fair Sister, touch me not!” Justin implored, smiling his flattery. “My brother’s bride sets a tempest in my own soul, and I am not made of stone.”

“I believe that he is,” Ondine muttered, the words slipping from her without thought.

“Ah-ha!” Justin declared, laughing. “So—this court excursion brought disharmony betwixt you, because of Anne, no doubt.”

She had no desire to explain the details of the estrangement in her marriage that Justin so obviously sensed and viewed with amusement. She moved forward to pluck a wildflower from the heath, then turned back to her handsome brother-in-law.

“Tell me more about Anne.”

Justin laughed, taking her hand and swinging it at his side so that they could continue their walk.

“Anne is a cunning vixen, nothing more, nothing less. She has partnered the king, among others, and from that alone, I can assure you, my brother never thought of her as anything other than amusement alone. The ‘beasts’ of Chatham are just that at times, my lady—proud and possessive. Beasts play where they will, but when they choose a mate, they do so with the gravest care, and might well be prone to kill for that mate’s honor and virtue. Can you foresee such a life with the lady Anne?”

Ondine did not reply. Warwick had, after all, taken her from the gallows, and he had, so it seemed, assumed her to be of the loosest morality.

She grinned sweetly at Justin, enjoying the lightness and laughter in his eyes, the tender flattery of his tongue, when all she received elsewhere was the most distant, forced courtesy.

“Tell me, Justin, do you know so much of beasts since you are of their number yourself?”

“Me? A beast? Nay, lady, never! The second child receives not the title, nor the land—but neither must he go through life with the label either!” Justin laughed.

Ondine laughed along with him, yet suddenly she was uneasy. Justin could hold the same intrigue in his visage as Warwick at times, the same ultimate charm, the same flirtation with danger. Did he ever resent his brother for the accident of birth, that Warwick held the title and the income?

It seemed that a cloud came just then, precisely, to cover the sun, to riddle her with chills of doubt. Ah, it was the madness of this place! It was her husband—oh, the devil should indeed take for a beast!—forcing her to a tempest only to dash her upon the coldness of a barren shore! There was no rhyme or reason to it, yet like him, she watched all with a jaundiced eye and found that mistrust came like a wall between any friendship, any closeness.

“Ah! Speak of the ‘beast,’ fair sister! There he is yonder, where we walk, with Clinton and Dragon!”

Justin caught her hand and hurried her along. She was flushed when she reached the stable yard, and being so, she felt that Warwick’s golden gaze touched upon her suspiciously, and she could not forget that his temper could be sparked to a high blaze with jealousy.

Clinton, observing them all from a casual stance, greeted them cordially. Warwick said nothing, but he had little time, for Justin moved in to touch Dragon’s warm muzzle, demanding of his brother, “Have you seen the colt in the field, then, Brother? I do warrant that the son shall rival the father soon!”

Warwick laughed at his brother, seeming to forget Ondine for the moment. “What? You say, for the colt is yours, Justin! I’ll wager easily and well that it will take many a year for even his offspring to rival Dragon in strength and speed!”