Tempt Me With Kisses (17 page)

He turned away and went to dress in what looked to be very old clothes from the very bottom of his battered chest: worn woolen breeches, a much-mended brown tunic and heavy boots. “We will have to start at once.”

She began to swiftly braid her hair. “After mass?”

He nodded. “We’ll take our bread and cheese and eat on the way to the gathering.” He ran his gaze over her, and her untied gown. “Since I told Rhonwen not to disturb us this morning, I will be your lady’s maid. Let me help you with that gown.”

He came up behind her. His hand glided into the opening at the back of her gown, his palm warm against her skin. Sighing, she leaned back, momentarily caught up in the sensation of skin upon skin. Then he circled her with his arms, pulled her back against him and nuzzled her neck.

“I thought you were going to help me, my lord,” she murmured as his hands glided along her breasts to her waist and then her hips. “I don’t call that helping.”

“I’m smoothing it down.”

“Whatever you wish to call it, please stop and tie the lacing.”

“With great pleasure, my lady.”

It was the first time anybody had called her by the title, and she was delighted. It was the reason she had given for this marriage, of course, so it should have pleased her. Yet in her heart she knew it was the title spoken in Caradoc’s deep, velvety voice that made it so wonderfully thrilling.

He made everything so wonderfully thrilling.

How much she wanted to spend the whole of the morning here with him—no, the whole day. Unfortunately, unless she wanted gossip and rumor to take her to task, she dare not.

She stepped away from her handsome husband’s roving hands and thought to keep the talk to something … not intimate. “Why didn’t you just keep the sheep in the pens after you wash them?”

“We would have to feed them if we did,” he said as he sat on the bed and pulled on his boots. “But they wouldn’t eat what we give them. Too rich it is for them, when they are used to foraging on the mountain. Like drinking that fine French wine when you aren’t used it. Two goblets and I knew I should avoid it on my wedding night.”

He raised his eyes to look at her, then frowned. “What’s wrong?”

She continued to braid her thick hair and wished she had been more guarded. “Nothing.”

“Something is. The wine was excellent—”

“No, it isn’t that,” she confessed, interrupting him. “It’s just that when you are out with the men, I’ll be here alone.”

“There is a household of servants for you to get to know,” he reminded her.

The household was the problem, but she didn’t want to start their marriage off with whining.

He came to her and pulled her into his arms, a most comfortable and comforting place to be. “It may take some time, Fiona, but I’m sure you’ll win them over.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“I ask no more.” He bussed her lightly on the forehead. “Now we had best get below, before Ganore comes pounding on the door and demands to know if we’re sick with the plague.”

“At least she would knock for you,” Fiona replied, pulling away. “If it was just me, she would probably walk in without a single rap on the door.”

Then, before they moved another inch or said another word, the heavens opened the way a dam burst its banks and rain poured down so hard and so fast, by the time they turned to look outside, water was already dripping from the leaking roof and running down the wall.

Caradoc swore, while Fiona hurried to take down the tapestries before they got wet. After helping her, he sighed and raked his tousled hair. “No shearing today.”

So he would not have to leave her. She tried to look sorry.

And obviously failed, as his frown changed to a sly smile.

“A pity, that,” he said. “I’ll have to find something to do to pass the time. Any suggestions, wife?”

“First, we must go to mass. Then break the fast. Then, I must begin my life as chatelaine of your household. When I have seen to my household duties for today, then, my lord,” she said, a seductive smile blooming, “I may have a spare moment or two for you.”

His breathing labored, his muscles taut with exertion, his body sweat-slicked, Caradoc continued to circle Jon-Bron in the empty stall. Both men held broadswords in their two hands, and each crouched and waited for the other to strike a blow. Like Caradoc, Jon-Bron was half naked; unlike Caradoc, his chest and back was scarred with ancient wounds, both large and small, and some from when he had tumbled from a tree and landed on a holly bush that had torn right through his clothes when he was a boy.

“Hold it up higher, Caradoc, to protect your chest and face. That’s right,” Jon-Bron coached.

One of the horses whinnied with what sounded like curiosity to know why two men, friends for years, were fighting each other in the stable.

“Don’t be distracted, Caradoc,” Jon-Bron warned after he glanced toward the other stall. “That will give your opponent an opening. Watch and wait. Be ready for any chance, and let nothing interfere—”

Suddenly the stable door creaked open, letting in the wind and rain with a whoosh. Immediately ignoring Jon-Bron’s caution, both men straightened and looked expectantly at the entrance.

They lowered their swords as Dafydd stumbled over the threshold and stared with unmasked surprise at the sight that met his eyes, as if he had never seen Caradoc half-naked and sweating with a broadsword in his hand and Jon-Bron teaching a man how to fight. “Caradoc, what the devil are you doing?”

Jon-Bron tossed down his sword and leaned over, resting his hands on his knees as he caught his breath, while Caradoc slumped against the empty stable wall. “We’re practicing.”

“What for? Are you expecting an attack?” Dafydd demanded. He ran his gaze over the pale garrison commander, whose eyes were so bloodshot, they looked like glowing coals. “Or is this a punishment for Jon-Bron’s drunkenness last night?”

“I told you, we’re practicing.”

Dafydd’s own bloodshot eyes narrowed with sudden suspicion. “Ah, more showing off, is it? I must say, Caradoc, if that is what you were after, the hall would be a better place.”

Showing off had been the farthest thing from Caradoc’s mind when he had asked Jon-Bron for a practice while Fiona bustled about the castle. He didn’t want Fiona to realize how incompetent a warrior her noble husband was. While he was one of the fastest, most efficient shearers of sheep—and justly proud of that skill—that was hardly something a nobleman could brag about.

“It’s raining, so we can’t shear, so I thought I’d practice with a sword,” he said. “Nothing wrong with that, is there?”

“I didn’t say it was wrong,” Dafydd said. “Just strange.”

“He’s better than he used to be,” Jon-Bron noted as he picked up his sword. “Why, I remember the days when he could barely lift—”

“Years ago, that was,” Caradoc interrupted, his pride piqued. “I was younger then.”

“Aye, and scrawny as a bird with the ribs poking out of you. Remember, Dafydd?” Jon-Bron replied nostalgically. “What was it Connor called you sometimes? The starving vulture?”

Caradoc didn’t deign to respond as he lifted a bucket of water and took a gulp.

Dafydd cocked his head as he studied Jon-Bron. “You look terrible.”

“No more than you,” Jon-Bron shot back. “You had as much
braggot
as I did—or probably more, since I fell asleep before you did.”

“Passed out, you mean,” Caradoc said, glancing at both of them as he put the bucket back down. “I’ve never seen either one of you sleeping with your head on the table and a mug clenched in your fist before. And I would not be too quick to tell Jon-Bron he looks the worse for it, Dafydd, because you don’t look any better.”

“Then you should be showing Jon-Bron here some mercy, for we were celebrating your wedding, after all,” Dafydd replied as he plopped himself down in the straw.

“Well, so you were,” Caradoc admitted more genially. “Jon-Bron, I think we’re finished for the day.”

He sheathed his sword, which had not been out of its scabbard in so long, it had taken three tries for him to pull it free. “If it’s still raining tomorrow, we’ll meet again after the noon and practice some more.” He put a condemning expression on his face. “And stay away from the
braggot
.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Jon-Bron said as he, too, sheathed his broadsword. His tunic, like Caradoc’s, had been tossed over the wall of the stall, and he took it down to put on. “Well, maybe you do. If only I could remember the afterward when it’s put before me, but it tastes so good.”

“And costs so much,” Caradoc added as he slung his sword belt over the stable post and reached for his tunic.

“But money no trouble now, my friend,” Dafydd jovially observed. “You’ve seen to that.”

“Aye, but it’s money I don’t want spent on
braggot
or wine. Debts I have that must be paid, and more taxes to come,” he said as he sat heavily beside Dafydd.

His action sent motes of dust and bits of straw into the air, tickling his nostrils and reminding him to send Rhonwen into the village when the rain let up a bit, to buy a featherbed.

He could so easily imagine sinking into a featherbed with Fiona’s soft, welcoming body beneath him…

“Have no fear,” Jon-Bron said, bringing him back to the here and now, away from the contemplation of lovemaking. “Ale will suit me and my men fine.”

He left the stall and went to the stable door. Opening it, he threw his arm over his head to shield it from the rain and dashed out into the courtyard.

“Eifion said last night he was sure the rain was going to let up by tonight,” Dafydd remarked.

Caradoc sighed as he bunched up his tunic, then put it behind him to cushion his back as he leaned against the stable wall. “Then it’s rain for days. At least it will keep Cordelia home.”

Dafydd nodded, then his gaze went to Caradoc’s broadsword. “What’s this really about, Caradoc? Since when do you decide to pick up a sword? Always better with a quill, you were.”

“I just thought that I should practice. Now that my finances are not such a worry, I have more time for such things.”

“Then it’s nothing to do with your wife at all?”

“Of course not.”

Dafydd shook his head. “Liar.”

“Blackguard.”

“Varlet.”

“Nit.”

“At least when I’m after impressing a woman,” Dafydd noted as he began to plait some straw, “I don’t come up with some pathetic excuse about plenty of time on my hands.”

“Your wits are still addled by that
braggot
. How is this to impress Fiona? First of all, she cannot see me,” Caradoc said as he closed his eyes. Maybe he had worked a bit
too
hard.

“That’s true—for now. Maybe you’re planning on revealing your warrior glory later, after more practice.”

Caradoc slid Dafydd a critical glance under his half-open lids. “I don’t have to reveal my warrior glory to her. She’s my wife, isn’t she? Why would I have to trouble myself to impress her?”

“Because she’s your bride, man.” Dafydd’s expression altered, to one of understanding. “Because Connor was always better at this than you, and it galls you still. Now you have saved Llanstephan from the tax collectors, so you think you will succeed in this, too, at least in your wife’s green eyes.”

Caradoc frowned. “Now you sound like Eifion. Your predictions are no more accurate, either. I decide to practice with a sword on a rainy day, and suddenly there are all sorts of deep, dark reasons thrown at me.”

Which may be true, but that was not for even Dafydd to know
.

Dafydd didn’t answer directly as he looked at the straw in his hands. “I wonder where Connor is right now.”

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” Caradoc declared, telling himself that was true.

They said nothing for a while, each in their own thoughts. Then Dafydd grinned, and Caradoc knew peace was restored between them.

“I know where your wife is,” he announced.

“In the hall. Where else?”

Dafydd tossed aside the straw he had been playing with and once again his expression grew serious. “She’s in the kitchen, laying down the law to Gwillym about the meals, with Ganore looking daggers at her. I stopped in there looking for you.”

Ganore’s fierce countenance was not unexpected, and he doubted there was little he could do about it anyway. “And the others? How are they treating Fiona?”

Dafydd shrugged. “About how you’d expect. Silent as stones, the lot of them, while she talks on, pleasant as can be. Myself, I don’t know how she’s managing it. I would have given up long ago, for I gather this has been going on since you broke the fast this morning.”

His expression just as grim, Caradoc nodded. Where Ganore led, the other servants would follow—at least until Fiona somehow proved herself.

It wasn’t going to be easy winning over Cordelia or Ganore, but if anybody could overcome Cordelia’s fierce Welsh pride and Ganore’s prejudices, he believed it would be the amazing, astounding, delightful Fiona. Fiona the Fair, come to rescue him from the dungeon of his despair.

“She started off asking for the keys from Ganore,” he explained to his friend, “which of course she had every right to do. She asked nicely enough, but you would have thought Ganore had been ordered to give up her hand with them.” He shook his head. “Maybe I should have stayed. But the household is for Fiona to manage now, and I thought I’d done enough.”

“Oh, I think you did plenty that first day, all right,” Dafydd agreed, so seriously that Caradoc could hardly believe it was Dafydd speaking. “Made her a threat to them, you did, with your harshness and order to respect her. That did not smooth her way. It would have been better to say nothing. She felt that, too. I saw it in her face.”

“I didn’t,” he replied defensively. “I had to say something, didn’t I? I only came to her defense.”

As he thought back, though, he recalled that she had not looked as pleased as he had expected.

But Dafydd couldn’t have more of an understanding of Fiona than he did, not after last night. “She didn’t say anything to me about it.”

“What did you expect her to do, criticize you in front of everybody? She’s not like Cordelia, you know.”