The Dragon and the Jewel (45 page)

Eleanor was surprised to receive a letter from her mother, of all people, the first communication she had received since she was a child. She was not surprised, however, to learn that she corresponded because she wanted something. Suddenly all became clear. The questions she’d wished to ask Simon were answered.

Hugh de Lusignan, Count of La Marche, whom her mother had married before King John was cold in his grave, was in open conflict with Louis of France. Her mother had asked for her son Henry’s support in an all-out war against France. Hugh de Lusignan was the highest Poitevin noble, and when Louis conferred the country of Poitou on his brother Alphonse, Isabella and Hugh had been outraged. She considered Poitou hers and often wore a crown. She had practically ordered her son,
the King of England, to come to her aid. She pointed out that it was his duty to uphold their cause and gain back land for her sons, who were Henry’s half brothers. In her letter to Eleanor she urged her to persuade Henry to help his brothers, who were, after all, Eleanor’s brothers also.

It was now Eleanor’s turn to fly into a rage, waving the crackling parchment in the air while she blistered her husband’s ears with her fine opinion of her mother. “The thing that baffles and perplexes me is her great love for those three piss-poor excuses of sons she bore de Lusignan. She sure as hell never loved any of her Plantagenet children! Now she is trying to manipulate and exploit us to further the ambitions of her favorites. The mere thought that William de Lusignan is my half brother makes me want to puke!”

Simon frowned as he listened to her tirade. It was obvious she did not want him to return to England to aid Henry. “If only Henry had your common sense. Alas, his mother still dominates him to the point where he runs to do her bidding. He even extends the hand of friendship to me, whom he injured irrevocably.”

“Well, you can tell him to go to hellfire and I shall tell my mother the same!”

“Softly, darling, softly.” Simon took the letter from her and pulled her into his arms. “Don’t waste all your passion and fire on them, give it to me.”

“Oh, I wish I had a fireplace. I’d burn their damned letters.”

He tipped up her chin and his eyes kindled with desire as he looked down into her lovely flushed face. “I fantasize about a fire. The first thing I’m going to do if we are ever again in a cold climate is light a blazing fire in our chamber. Then I’m going to pull you down on the rug and make love to you. I long to see the fireshine splashed across your body. I crave to nuzzle you in places the fire has heated. Nothing compares to making love to a woman before a fireplace.”

He could feel the heat snaking through his loins, and he slipped his hands over her bottom cheeks to press her close so she could feel his hard desire for her.

“Mmmm, Simon, it sounds like heaven, but we aren’t going home to Kenilworth,” she swore.

To himself he said, Yes we are, sweeting. It is what you want most in the world. To her he said, “Come to bed, I intend to make love to you for a couple of hours.”

“First, Simon, tell me what you replied to Henry?”

“Not a chance,” he teased as his fingers unfastened her gown and slipped it from her shoulders. He decided to keep her in ignorance of his plans. She would misinterpret his intentions and now that the chasm between them had narrowed, he had no interest in widening it again.

“I won’t yield to you until you tell me,” she swore.

“Ha! Won’t yield to me?” he said, sweeping his hands down her bare back until they came to rest beneath her bottom, then he lifted her up to him so that her face was on a level with his. “I wager it will take about three kisses to wear down your defenses.”

In fact it took only one.

K
eeping all secret from his wife, the Earl of Leicester agreed to return and recruit an army for Henry on condition that he be allowed to attend the king’s council meetings and have a voice in government.

A phrase from Henry’s letter had jumped from the pages. It repeated over and over again in Simon’s mind and had probably been the deciding factor in his decision to return. Henry had begged him “for England’s sake.” Simon shook his head regretfully. England was being ruined by injustice. He knew he should have taken a stand long ago against what was happening “for England’s sake.” What had prevented him? He knew the answer in his heart as well as his head. Eleanor had prevented him.

Before he took action he was able to think things through to their conclusion. You could not topple a king from a throne without a civil war. Where would her loyalties lie? He knew if Henry was killed as a result of any action on Simon’s part, Eleanor would hate him forever. Henry was weak. Eleanor had always been stronger; so strong that she had always taken Henry’s part.

De Montfort knew himself well. He did nothing by halves.
The step he was about to take was irrevocable. Once he set his feet on the path of restoring justice to England there would be no stopping, no turning back until it was accomplished, whether it took a year or a lifetime. He did not doubt his own ability for a moment; he would do or die, but he did have doubts about Eleanor’s priorities—Plantagenet or de Montfort? Which was she?

He had a deep, yearning need for her to trust him implicitly. He would decide their future, and she should love him enough to accept his decision whatever it was. Either one trusted totally or one did not. Either one loved totally or one did not! He took his resolve, knowing full well that if it so ended that he should rule England, it would prove to her beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had married her for ambition.

Only when he had readied his ships and his men did he even hint to her that the morrow would part them. She was taking a cool, leisurely sponge bath when he walked in on her and dismissed her women impatiently. It was obvious he was in a hurry, and she assumed he had something private to discuss.

“Simon, whatever is it that couldn’t have waited until I finished?”

He came to the bath and towered over her. His eyes devoured her, leaving no doubt of what he wanted. The naked lust upon his face brought a blush to her cheeks. He undressed rapidly, flinging off his clothes with such purpose she thought he intended to join her in the water, but when he was naked he reached down two powerful arms and lifted her up to him. “I want you now, this minute,” he demanded.

“My lord, your haste is unseemly,” she protested as he crushed her wet breasts against the dark pelt of his chest.

“I like unseemly, it is so improper and indecent.” His mouth was hot and demanding as it took hers savagely. Between burning kisses he said, “I also like unreserved, unresisting, unrestrained, unruly, and unthinkable.”

Eleanor caught her breath as his hot mouth took her ruching nipple and her whole areola inside and his tongue curled about the peak, sending a streak of molten fire along every vein. His lovemaking had been so gentle since the baby, but clearly gentleness
was the last thing on his mind tonight. He was making love as if it were the first time, or the last.

Her lips pressed against the strong column of his throat and traced a path to his ear. “Why hurry?” she purred.

“We only have ’til dawn,” he said hoarsely, telling her that after one night of passion he would be gone the moment she closed her eyes in exhausted sleep. He had deliberately awakened her desire before he had told her he was planning to leave. Her woman’s cleft was all slippery from the bath and he had already managed to slip the head of his huge shaft inside her and was urging her to wrap her legs about him so he could bury himself to the hilt.

She moved, forcing him out of her. “You leave at dawn? That means you have been preparing for days and said nothing to me!”

His hands pulled her thighs apart and he forced himself back into her. “I love to thrust up into you while we’re standing.” She loved it too and moved her hips so that she took him whole. She gasped at the sheer fullness of him. When she was able to speak again she said, “I have a hundred questions. Will you answer them?”

He thrust into her, hard. “No.”

She withdrew her sheath. “Yes!”

His powerful hands cupped her bottom and pulled her downward so that he impaled her. “No questions. Just trust me.”

Again she lifted her body so that he was all the way out of her. “No!” she cried.

He pulled her down and at the same time thrust up into her. “Yes!” His word was final. This was why she had been born. This was what her body had been made for. She could no longer speak or even think, she could only taste and smell and feel.

Between lovemaking when he cradled her in his arms and whispered love words that made her very bones melt, she tried to probe for information. He put his fingers to her lips to silence her questions. “Dearest love, once and for all time will you not trust me to do what is best, what is right?”

She sighed and kissed his fingertips, tasting herself upon them. She supposed that he was right. It was best that he return
to being governor of Palestine so that their finances would no longer be a burden to them. De Montfort now had two sons to worry about, and she knew how extravagant she was. A smile curved her mouth as she remembered the hundreds of copper kitchen utensils she had ordered for Kenilworth.

He kissed the corners of her mouth. “Did a wicked thought just cross your mind?”

“My smile is one of guilt for all the things I buy myself,” she confessed.

“Never feel guilty, my sweetheart. ’tis good you buy the things you want, for the presents I buy you are few and far between,” he said ruefully, fingering the gold bracelet with which he’d gifted her after the first time they had made love.

She blushed, remembering. “Splendor of God, Sim, when I first saw you naked with that black leather contraption sheathing your prick, it’s a wonder I didn’t expire.”

He whispered, “So that’s what tempted you to fornicate. I thought it was the exhilaration of the wild ponies.”

“I confess it was a combination. You were so like a wild stallion—big, dark, powerful, savage. I knew I must experience you or regret it for the rest of my life.”

After a moment’s silence he asked softly, “Do you have any regrets, Eleanor?”

“Only one. I regret that it wasn’t you I wed when I was nine. How different our lives might have been. No shameful scandals; no exile.” She was thinking again and Simon had the cure for that. He lifted her over him and crushed her soft breasts against the hard muscles of his chest. She opened her thighs to his questing manroot and gave herself up to him.

“Ah, love, you trust your body to me so completely, will you not trust your life to me?” he beseeched.

“Sim, Sim, I trust, I yield to your will, your decisions, whatever they may be.”

He kissed her deeply then. He heard her clearly promise him everything he had ever wanted from her, but he knew she was in the throes of sensuality, and he was jaded just enough to wonder if she would take back her promise in the cold light of day.

Her lips were love-swollen, her breasts ached from hardening
and softening so many times, her rosebud tingled with unbearable sensitivity, yet as the night hours galloped toward morning she clung to him desperately.

“You will send for me as soon as may be? As soon as Simon is old enough to travel? I don’t feel safe without you. I don’t feel whole or alive without you.” Was she debasing herself to tell him he meant more than life to her?

His lovemaking should have exhausted her hours ago, yet suddenly she knew a need to devour him. Her love-swollen lips moved down his body greedily seeking his male center, which never ever failed her. She bathed it with her tears then licked them off, feeling the onleaping as muscle turned to marble, filling her mouth with the full splendor of him.

“My love, my torment.” He groaned, and she felt satisfied, not realizing that he had promised her nothing.

When Eleanor opened her eyes a faint half light could be discerned from the window. She was filled with the languor of too much lovemaking. She stretched, naked in the bed, and curved her body toward her lover. With a shock she realized he was gone. Already she yearned for him. Love madness filled her with the urge to run to him in the courtyard and fling herself naked into his arms. She longed to press her soft breasts and thighs into his rigid armor, which was not much harder than his magnificent body that lay beneath that armor.

She ran to the window and flung aside the curtain. She opened her mouth to cry his beloved name and then she saw her. She emitted a silent scream for there mounted upon a milk-white steed beside de Montfort was the golden-haired beauty Eleanor had forgotten. She saw him raise the hood of the girl’s pale-blue cloak before they rode from the courtyard side by side. The hooves of his fighting men’s warhorses pounded after him interminably until she feared her eardrums would burst.

They had spent the entire night in each other’s arms. He had exhorted her to trust him and blindly she had pledged that trust. Now he had betrayed her! All the hours he had lain within her, he was planning his deception. For a few moments the sight of the woman blotted out all coherent thought, then
slowly she perceived that something was odd. Surely if they were returning to Palestine they would sail from Brindisi, not travel overland.

She threw on a robe and with bare feet and hair flying she ran from her chamber and down the long flight of stone steps to the balustrade, then out to the courtyard. The last of the baggage train was rumbling through the gates. Wild-eyed she shouted to the driver to halt. “What is your destination?” she cried, suddenly knowing without being told.

The driver slowed, gave her a blissful grin and rejoiced, “We’re going home!”

Eleanor staggered as if she had been struck. Its impact knocked her outside of herself so that she could see and hear and watch herself as if from a short distance away. The cry torn from her throat was like that of a wounded she-wolf. She thought of her cub and felt she had been abandoned by her mate. She saw herself run back to her chamber, heard herself swearing and raving and raining curses upon the head of de Montfort. She rent her robe to ribbons, then started upon the bed linen on which they had coupled. Finally she threw herself upon the floor to sob out her heart.

It must have been hours later when a cool, mocking voice asked, “Are you done?” It was her own voice. “Put your childish histrionics aside, Eleanor, and plot your revenge.” When she dissected her feelings she knew she could have borne his going home without her if only he had shared the decision with her. He was no better than Selim had been, using a woman for only one purpose, negating her intelligence. She was honest enough to admit she could even have accepted that for now. In the near future she had intended to let him know that unless he treated her as his equal, their relationship would be a stormy affair. The thing that stuck in her craw was the blond slave girl. Eleanor knew she consumed him when they were together, that no other woman satisfied his needs as she did. She knew her power over him and did not fear his taking a casual whore to satisfy his body’s needs. But the fact that he had taken the girl to England instead of her demanded retribution.