The Marriage Bed (The Medieval Knights Series) (29 page)

She could feel the blush starting at her breasts, rising to her face. She kept her eyes closed.

He massaged each thigh, his thumbs coming shadow-close to the seat of her ache. She pounded her anticipation and frustration, her blood alive and wild, her skin vibrating, her breath shallow. She wanted him. Needed his touch. Now.

She skittered toward his hands on a whimper. He flicked at her arousal once, twice, and stopped. She near cried aloud her anguish. His hands went to her breasts, plucking hard, and she bucked against his hands, her hips twitching, grinding against air.

Now.

"Richard," she begged.

"Look at me, Isabel," he said.

She obeyed instantly, without thought. She could not see; he was a dark shape against stone and moonlight, and then her eyes cleared. He was looking down at her, his face grim and still, his eyes alight with unearthly sparks.

"When does duty end and desire begin, Isabel? Only then shall you find release," he said, his voice as hard and unyielding as the stone that surrounded them.

He wanted, nay, demanded that she surrender all to him. He would leave her stripped, without her dignity, without her adherence to duty and duty alone. He would have her beg, to have her admit that he was her desire. Nay, she would not.

Never again.

Yet she ached...

"I do not want—"

"Tell me not what you do not want," he growled. "Speak only of what you want, and I will deliver it unto you."

When she was silent, he bent to take her in a rough kiss, and she surged to meet it. Savagely they attacked each other, their hands hard and demanding, their mouths wide and wet. They asked for no quarter and they were given none. In their desire they were perfectly matched. His arms were wrapped around her, holding her hard to him, bending her back and stealing her air. She had no need of any air she could not steal from Richard's lungs. She clawed his back, twining her fingers in his silky hair, holding him to her, demanding the release he withheld.

He would not yield.

He would not touch her and give her what she needed.

"Give me a child," she said against his mouth.

"Not good enough," he almost snarled, nipping her ear. "Tell me what you seek in this bed, by my hand."

When she would not speak, he unleashed the power of his hands.

He closed her legs, the pressure on her fullness exquisite pain, and traced the path he would like to follow, if only for her stubborn will. With a finger he deliberate and delicately toyed with her arousal, touching lightly now, missing altogether, pressing hard for but a moment and then gone, like the lark at dusk. She quivered, her body screaming for release, so close at times and then so far, his hand an ally and an enemy who changed allegiance moment by moment, stroke by stroke.

He kissed her, his kiss full of promise and passion. A coaxing kiss. A kiss to lure. A kiss to believe in.

She relaxed into his kiss, his breath her own, his scent covering her, while she strained against his tormenting hand.

She was close to tears.

"Only name it," he said, pulling back from their kiss, "and it shall be yours."

The world had shrunk to the marriage bed, to what they gave and what was stolen. He had stolen her resolve and the snarled threads of her dignity, but there was one thing which Richard could give.

"Pleasure. Give me my pleasure," she commanded.

With a growl of satisfaction, Richard obeyed.

He spread her legs wide and cupped her fully, his hand wet with her need. With his fingers, he strummed her. Relentlessly he plucked and teased her arousal, while his hand snaked up her trembling body to squeeze her nipple in urgent command.

Isabel's body obeyed.

Her convulsions started deep within, and Richard plunged into her to meet them. He felt her pulsing around him, squeezing him, enveloping him in rigid spasms, releasing her seed to meet his. With his hand in her hair and his mouth on her throat, he joined her in her release as they had been joined in their torment. Duty was forgotten as desire was fulfilled.

She had achieved her pleasure; he had given it to her.

He smiled in satisfaction and kissed her temple, stroking back her hair.

He lay within her, one with her, and sighed his contentment.

* * *

For Isabel, there was only defeat.

He had delivered her unto her pleasure, the force of it stunning her. He had given himself over to his passion, unleashing his desire upon her. She knew what was to come.

He would reject her, withdrawing from her in body and mind.

It was all duty for him. He had to get a child upon her in order to be free to return to his chosen life. And it was all duty for her. But she prayed that she would soon be carrying; she did not think that she could endure night after night of Richard's determined attentions with her heart intact.

She pretended it was intact now.

The mother-of-pearl clouds were building again, turning the night sky gray and masking the shining moon. Richard lay next to Isabel, his breathing deep and steady, his arm tossed over her waist, his face buried in her unbound hair.

"Do you think it possible that I am with child?" she asked.

Richard lifted his head and looked at her delicate profile outlined by the radiance of the moon. How many wounds had he inflicted upon her? Too many to count. But he would heal her.

If he only knew how.

"We have done all possible to see that it is so," he said, tracing a fingertip down the fragility of her profile. "At least I have." He smiled in jest.

But Isabel did not understand his purpose. He could feel her tension and her withdrawal. She would not forgive. She wanted nothing of him save his seed.

"It is more than possible," he repeated, "yet too soon to know. We must be diligent."

She remained quiet, her silence a cloak lying heavily upon them both. What held her tongue? Had she suffered so greatly at his hands this night? He had brought her to her pleasure, had he not?

And the method he had used to force her to demand satisfaction from him shamed him now. He could have seen to her needs without driving her into frenzy, yet he had demanded that she want him, as she once had, before she had known of Bertrada.

Bertrada, ever in the midst of them, even upon their marriage bed.

As was his pride ever among them. Could he not, even now, let go the sin of pride?

Richard rolled over on his back and crossed his arms under his head. Isabel had been mauled at Adam's hands, and he had bedded her as soon as she was wiped clean of the man's death blood. He was a poor sort of man to treat his wife so, yet he had not found the will to stop.

And therein lay the worst of his cardinal sins. His body ruled him. He was little better than a beast of the field or wood—worse, since he possessed a soul. Such had been his sin with Bertrada, and now he brought his foul nature into his marriage.

Yet he had wanted to possess Isabel, to drive clean the memory of Adam's touch and impress his own scent upon her. That he had done, and now he had a wife at his side who was frightened into silence.

"Does the performance of your marital duty distress you, Isabel?" he asked the ceiling.

She was silent long. The sounds of the hall came to them as they lay upon their solemn bed—the snap of fire, the first deep snore of the evening, the slosh of water being carried in a bucket, soft male voices in melodic conversation, a woman's gentle laugh. And still Isabel was silent.

"Nay," she said at last. She was lying on her side, turned from him, her hands pressed between her knees. "Does it you?" she asked softly.

"Nay," he answered at once. "I find the duties of the marital bed to be less than onerous."

He heard her sigh and heard the tremble within it. "I but jest, Isabel, and badly. There was little call for humor in the abbey, and my frolicsome parts are as ill used as my warlike ones."

"You are a fine warrior," she said immediately.

"You defend me gallantly, at least in part," he said.

He could feel her smile in the dark and smiled in return.

"As you defended me," she said into the night, thanking him.

"'Twas my right," he said dismissively, "and my duty."

"Your duty," she repeated, her tone flat.

"My pleasure as well, if I must confess it," he said. "Pray for me, Isabel, for I feel no remorse for sending him to purgatory without a prayer to follow him."

She turned onto her back and lifted her knees, her feet braced against the bed and her arms crossed over her.

"And should you not pray for me, if you can, for being the cause of his death?"

He turned sharply to look at her. "How are you the cause when it was he who mauled you like a wolf tears into a hare? You the cause? Nay, 'twas my blade which sent him out of this life and into the next; 'tis I who need prayer over the matter of Adam."

Isabel turned her head to look at him, her arms still covering her. "And I do not? Did I not... entice him? Was it not I who—"

"Does the hare entice the wolf?" he interrupted, lifting himself onto his elbows to look down into her troubled eyes. "Nay, do not think to rob me of needed prayer, Isabel. I am in dire need. The time will come when I must pray most diligently for you. But now is not your time."

He released her from her guilt with the words; in full knowledge, he released her. He did not hold her accountable for Adam's assault, he did not blame her for her flirtatious ways, which was in his right to do. And with his words, so carefully and comically spoken, she was released.

She looked up at him, her smile slow and brilliant. "Now is not my time?"

"Nay," he said with a returning smile, "now is not. You have done nothing. Nothing, Isabel."

"And you will tell me when I am in need of most urgent prayer?"

Richard kissed the curled end of her hair and smiled. "Let us both remember that you have asked me to tell you when you have erred. 'Tis a fine way to begin a marriage."

"So say you," she snipped with a grin as wide and white as the moon.

"Naturally, and am I not a monk, knowledgeable in all things spiritual?"

"You are no monk," she said gently.

"Nay," he agreed, "but I am a husband, and as husband I bid you sleep, Isabel."

"Will you stay?" she asked.

Would he stay by her side all through the darkness or would he, as any Benedictine would, rise to pray in the chapel throughout the night? He was a husband, not a Brother; he would stay. He would stay by her side for all his life.

"Naturally, I will stay," he said, kissing her lips gently.

She was asleep, her breathing soft and deep, her limbs heavy and still, before he had finished his first Paternoster. She jerked awake, her fear leaping up and filling the room, her open-mouthed cry silent.

"Sleep, Isabel," he commanded, forcing her fears to run from him. "None shall touch you while I live."

She was asleep almost before she had known she had been awake, her fear a memory of the night, misty and fantastical. He laid his hand upon her back, rejoicing in the simple rise and fall of her breathing. She was alive and safe; naught else mattered, save that she was his.

She was his.
The words struck a chord in his heart that rang distant and discordant.
None shall touch you while I live.

Why did he yet live?

He was a man who had taken the wife of the lord of his fostering. Henley, knowing that, should have killed him. Henley had the right, just as Richard had taken the life of Adam for his presumption in laying hands on Isabel. It was a husband's right, and none disputed it.

A husband now, he looked upon his trysts with Bertrada with different eyes. Where had Henley been during the first signs of illicit attraction? During the times when Bertrada had been so assuredly alone?

He knew the answer now, looking back on that time, and for the first time saw more than his own guilt. Henley had been there, seeing all, saying nothing. Allowing matters to proceed apace, leaving his wife in Richard's path for Richard to take and hold, even for an hour. Henley had seen all and done... nothing.

Why?

He could not grasp the thought. If any man touched Isabel, he would follow Adam to the grave. Isabel was his and would stay his. Only his. What sort of man would allow otherwise? A coward, certainly. There was the matter of Henley's abrupt departure, with no inquiries made as to the death of his newly sworn man, and with no apologies.

Not the acts of an honorable man.

And a dishonorable man was capable of anything.

Chapter 26

Isabel awoke to birdsong and the howl of a kicked cat. While her eyes were yet closed, she heard Edmund and Ulrich laughing in the hall and Elsbeth's soft and muffled response. With her first languorous stretch, from fingertips to toes, she heard Joan say something sharply to Aelis. She did not hear Aelis's reply.

'Twere all the sounds of daybreak at Dornei and she was deeply content, from her skin to her bones. Content and slightly sore. Richard had used her hard last night; he was a hard man, she had always known it. How hard she could not have guessed.