Suzanne Robinson (12 page)

“I have just spent most of an hour being chastised, rebuked, castigated, and generally put to the horn. Why could you not have told me about your aversion to swords and daggers?”

Pen blew her nose loudly. “Who told you?”

“Every addlepated rogue of an inhabitant of this castle.”

“Even—even Nany.”

“Especially Nany, who had taken her usual bath in ale this e’en and was eloquent upon the subject.”

Uncertain of how much damage Nany had done, and aching with shame, Pen stared at her kerchief. “Oh.”

“She was eloquent until I began asking about the nature of your dislike and how it came about. Then she closed her mouth, the foolish old lament.”

When he stopped, Pen sneaked a glance at him. He was regarding her calmly, as if waiting for her to offer more explanations. Knowing she couldn’t make him leave her alone, Pen tried to think of a way to get rid of him. He wouldn’t relent until answered, but she’d
never told anyone about her gift. The one time she’d confided in a girlhood friend, she’d lost her to fear and suspicion. She’d lost her father and mother to the gift. She couldn’t risk more pain. Pen twisted the kerchief in her fists. She would give him part of the truth.

“I—um—I saw a man butchered by sword when I was a child.”

“There’s more,” he said. “I can feel it. Nany mumbled about a curse.”

“Oh, Nany is always seeing changelings and hags and elves and is convinced that behind every misfortune is a curse due to some …”

Her voice trailed off under the burden of Tristan’s unsmiling gaze.

“I had hoped for the truth from you, but you’re frightened. I can see that now. I should have realized it at once, for you never shrink from battling me in other matters. Very well. Then if your aversion is merely that, you won’t mind explaining why you kept this from me.”

He had been sitting with one leg braced on the floor. He stooped and pulled something from his boot. Straightening, he held the gold and ruby dagger in the palm of his hand.

“Nany asked me how I found my dagger,” he said as he held it out to her. “I found it looking for you. How haps it that you never showed me my dagger?”

As he proffered the weapon, Pen widened her eyes. Her breathing stopped, and her vision filled with the hilt. Crimson enamel transformed into a field of leaves so red, they were almost black. In shape they resembled deadly nightshade, and on the leaves writhed golden serpents. Pen shrieked, threw out her hand to ward them off, and hurled herself off the bed. She raced for
the farthest corner of her chamber, rammed into stone, and clawed at it.

Tristan’s voice called her back from the gold and ruby nightmare. “Pen! Pen, it’s gone. The dagger is gone.”

She blinked. Her vision cleared, and her sense returned. She could feel Tristan’s arms around her. He’d picked her up without her knowing it and was walking to a window seat. He sat with her in his lap, pressed her body to his, and murmured reassurance. Shivering, Pen grasped the edges of his doublet and buried her face in his neck.

“It’s gone,” he whispered.

“The s-serpents, they tried to get me.”

“I’ve put it away in my chamber.”

“Th-that’s why I locked it in that casket.”

She felt him nod, suddenly remembered where she was, and burrowed her face deeper into his flesh. Calmer, she realized how powerful his presence was. Unlike the other times when visions assaulted her, she hadn’t been lost until the images left of their own accord. He’d been able to reach inside the nightmare and pull her from it with his voice, the feel of his hands and body. Why did she have to lose him?

Gathering her courage, she lifted her head and faced him. “Do you, do you really hate me?”

He closed his eyes for a moment before facing her.

“Jesu give me strength. No. I was furious, but I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t understand, and you’d been so passionate with me that I felt betrayed.”

He met her gaze, and Pen began to drown in a darkness of a different kind, one that began to simmer her blood and turn it to steam.

“But,” he continued, “you must tell me the truth.”

As he said this, he smiled at her, and her misery
turned to rapture. That one smile caused her soul to dance on moonbeams and whirl in starlight, and so she told him the truth, from the beginning, every bit of it. He listened without interrupting until she finished and grew afraid that his silence meant condemnation. She started when he rose abruptly and placed her in the window seat, feeling abandoned. Then he knelt before her and captured her hands.

“You’re such a brave little woodcock.”

“I’m not mad!”

“I know that, Gratiana.”

He bent and kissed her hands. Pen’s mouth formed an O, and she wiggled in her seat at the intensity of the tingling that shot from her hands to her heart.

He looked up at her, scowling. “I find it hard to believe that your parents exiled you here.”

“Oh, you don’t understand. It was the only way. I was a danger, with my visions and portents. If I’d been accused of sorcery, they would have suffered along with me.”

“God’s breath, a father and mother are supposed to protect their child; instead, you protected them.”

Anxiety caused her chest to burn and tears threatened once again. “No, no. You don’t understand. They loved me.”

He didn’t answer. She met his gaze, pleading, and at last he smiled a pained smile.

“Of course they did. How foolish I am. How could they not love …”

She angled her head to the side as he paused, and stared at something beyond her shoulder. She glanced back, but there was nothing. Now he stared at her.

“Did you mean what you said?”

Pen avoided meeting his gaze. “I don’t remember saying anything of import.”

“You little coward. Back at the cliffs, when you ran away, you said you’d fallen in love with me.”

He moved to sit beside her, but she scooted back into a corner of the window seat. When he moved closer, trapping her, she hunched her shoulders and crumpled the skirt of her gown in both fists. She felt his breath skim across the flesh of her ear. Tiny bolts of lightning arced through her body.

“Did you mean what you said, my Gratiana?”

He knew anyway, so Pen managed to nod. The breath on her ear grew hot, and was followed by lips, and a soft kiss. Fingers lifted her chin, and she looked at him. He looked back, solemn and gentle.

“Verily, my dear little woodcock, I think I like this shrinking peony almost as much as my lusty sorceress, or my nonsensical mischief.”

She licked her lips. “You don’t think I’m possessed by Satan?”

“A fairy with a touch of mad blood, perhaps, but never Satan.”

She held still when he brought his mouth close to hers, then thought of something.

“You don’t think–”

“Jesu, my love, your questions are cursed untimely.”

He kissed her then, drawing her lips, pressing them, opening them. Excitement filled her as Pen understood that she was to have what she’d wanted and feared she’d lost. She came out of that corner then, pressing her body to his and accepting his heavy kiss. She dug her fingers beneath his clothing to find his chest. She rubbed her way down and felt each rib until his fingers at the neck of her gown distracted her. They tugged, then ripped, but she was too busy with her own explorations to care.

“Are you sure, Gratiana?”

With shaking hands Pen wrenched his belt free. “Untimely questions.”

He chuckled as he lifted her and put her on the bed. Impatient with the delay, she was placated when she perceived that he was going to take off his clothing. She paid attention to each movement, every piece of cloth, every inch of smooth flesh, every vein that stretched over a muscle.

Although she reddened with embarrassment, she looked anyway, for her newly discovered love impelled her. Once he bent to retrieve his trunk hose from the floor, exposing one of the few curved portions of his body. Pen promised herself that she would touch him there, soon. Then he straightened. He turned toward her, and she saw a white scar nestling in the hair on his thigh near his groin.

A jab of fear struck her as she realized it had been made by the tip of a blade, but then her gaze fastened on his hips, and she forgot the scar. The last bit of his clothing vanished. She hesitated, then reached out with both arms. He came to her, surrounding her with hot, unyielding male flesh.

Her gown loosened as he searched her with his hands. His palm cupped a breast. If she hadn’t been so feverish, she would have worried that he would find her lacking. But the moment passed quickly when he murmured something erotic and kissed her nipple. She nearly leapt in the bed with the intensity of the arousal his lips provoked.

When he began to suck, she raked her fingers through his hair and lunged against him. Her nipple was forced deeper into his mouth. She rubbed her hands up and down his body, spanning his back, kneading his buttocks. He moved to her other breast, and her desire climbed a higher peak.

She needed something more. Frantic, she searched his body, skimmed his thighs with her nails, then drew them upward. Her hands found his hips, and then his sex. She shied away, but he whispered to her of his love and his need. So much heat, so much urgency.

At last Pen responded to his whispers and began to stroke him. Each movement brought more heat, more urgency, and filled her with greater tension. She was so distracted by her discovery and its power that she felt no apprehension when he pressed his hand between her legs.

As he touched her, a wondrous aching grew and grew. On and on they pushed each other until Pen was sure she was going to burst into sparkling bits. Then he shifted, reassuring her as he moved between her legs. Kissing her breasts, he kept up his caresses.

She reached for him again, but he forbade her. Pressing her open, he touched her with himself. She started, but he reassured her with a pleading kiss. Pen responded to the entreaty and lifted her hips. He murmured to her again, and she obeyed him by remaining still. She felt so swollen and ached so.

This was true madness, and she needed relief. As he slowly inserted himself, Pen at last understood how she could gain release from her agony, and spread her legs wider. She felt a sharp sting as Tristan plunged forward. She gasped and clenched her jaw as he settled upon her.

Assistance arrived when he began to touch her nipples and suck them. By the time he began to move, she was more than ready. His hand slithered down to her core and rubbed her, causing even greater madness to erupt. Her hands stroked his arms and his back. She kissed her way across his neck and shoulder and dug her nails into his buttocks.

At the feel of her teeth and nails he moaned and pumped harder. Pen sank her fingers into flesh, she drove her hips higher and spread her legs as wide as they would go, and still she couldn’t get enough. She wanted to scream with the frustration.

Suddenly he stroked her in that maddening spot and then thrust himself into her. She screamed and burst into flames. Through her inferno she heard him groan and felt him pumping so hard she nearly broke through the bed ropes. He plunged into her one last time as she panted and quivered beneath him. Then they both collapsed, chests heaving, weak, and sated.

She opened her eyes to find him staring at her. He rose to his elbows and cupped a breast. He kissed her.

“My love, even if I regain all my memories, none will ever compare with this.”

Her eyes filled with tears. She couldn’t help it. She let them fall.

“Oh, Tristan. You make me furious and draw me into lurid sin, and I love you.”

“And I, my incomparable Gratiana, seem to have lost myself to you without discovering who I am.” He nuzzled her cheek. “Don’t weep, little woodcock, or I won’t tell you I love you as well.”

Tristan watched Pen drift into sleep. He was afraid to doze and miss that expression of contentment on her face. She’d confessed that Nany had given her a surfeit of bawdy explanations about men and women, but that she’d never wanted to find out the truth of it for herself until he’d touched her. That confession had thrilled him and frightened him when he thought of how easily he could have blundered with her.

Jesu, how he wished he could remember making love before. He couldn’t, but when he’d touched Pen, his body had known what to do. Therefore, he must have made love to a woman in the past.

From the ease with which various movements and practices came to him, he suspected he’d done it many times—many times, and with many different women. The idea worried him. Was he a lascivious churl?

He stirred, disturbed by the thought. Pen snuggled into the crook of his arm, and he kissed her forehead. Her hair tickled his nose, and he remembered being chained to his own arousal and feeling her hair with his hands.

The memory evoked a twitching between his legs. He resolved to behave himself. Turning onto his back, he closed his eyes.

He hadn’t intended to make love to Pen. He’d
awakened at a sound in his bedchamber earlier and realized that he’d been dosed with some herb. Enraged yet bleary, he’d kept still out of caution and peered past the hangings to see Pen’s little face studying the bed.

By the time he’d roused himself sufficiently to follow her, she’d gone. He rushed to the armory to find it empty except for a few scabbards and a box, which he broke open. It had contained the ruby and gold serpent dagger.

He hadn’t expected to be treated so by Pen, and his anger had been too hot for him to consider why she was behaving so strangely. Then, after he’d confronted her, she’d burst out with her own anguish. She’d said:
I never thought I’d fall in love with you
, and stunned him as if he’d been thrown against those jagged rocks on the beach again. Then Pen vanished and every ragtag villein, from the pig girl to that know-all Dibbler, had chastised him. He heard about how she’d taken each of them in or protected them, or saved them. And from their ravings, he’d gathered that Pen was as perfect a lady as Christ’s mother, and that he was lower than pig dung.

Still irate but willing to forgive, he’d followed Pen after threatening Dibbler and the others with thrashing if they didn’t return the weapons to the armory. He searched for Pen, but encountered Twistle and Nany on the stairs to her chamber. The two women crowded him against a wall and ranted. Then Nany had said too much.