The Mistress Of Normandy (15 page)

“Aye, I am flawed,” she said bitterly. “Flawed by an uncle who cares more for intrigue than for me.”

He laid his hand on her shoulder. She fought against the comfort offered by the warm, steadfast pressure of his fingers.

“I went in secret to Bois-Long,” he said. “I spied a black-haired woman riding across the causeway. I now know her to be Macée Mondragon, but I mistook her for you.” His jaw grew taut with distaste. “Do you wonder that I did not connect the fair
pucelle
in the woods with the dark woman beating a servant?”

The cords chafed her wrists. “Even if that were true, that disrespectful valet you sent should have given you a rudimentary description of the demoiselle.”

Humor flared in Rand’s eyes. “Jack said you were cold, hard-hearted, arrogant. I’m afraid he was a bit too put off by your cannonade to admit that you’re also angelically lovely.”

“His wits are as numb as his master’s,” she snapped.

“You did spin a fair tale yourself.” His calm, steady eyes, flecked with gold from the lamp, held hers like the mesmerizing flame of a conjurer’s lantern. He laid a warm hand on her cheek. “The castle orphan, true. But a gunner’s daughter, a gently bred companion to the demoiselle? You were convincing. How could I have believed otherwise?”

“You
knew
,” she said, twisting in her bonds to escape the firebrand of his touch.

“I did not.” He leaned forward. “Besides, you are forgetting the most convincing evidence of all.”

“What might that be?” she asked loftily.

“The Demoiselle Belliane was a married woman by the time I arrived in France.” Ever so gently, his hand coursed down the length of her. “But the woman I made love to at the place of St. Cuthbert’s cross was as virgin.”

A dreadful darkness pressed in on her. God, he knew her so well; he struck so close.

“No,” she denied wildly, struggling. “I was not, I—”

His fingers drew a pattern on her thinly clad thigh. “Even before I saw your maiden’s blood, I knew. Don’t pretend you’ve forgotten. Even in my own inexperience I recognized your purity.”

She squeezed her eyes shut to stave off an onslaught of memories. Yet she couldn’t forget. His hesitation, her ignorance. His tenderness, her response. His gentle hands teaching her untried body the ways of physical love.

“Tell me why,” he quietly urged. “Tell me how it came to be that you were married, yet chaste.”

She gazed at him through narrowed eyes and strained against her bonds. “I’ll not be interrogated like a prisoner on the rack. I owe you no explanation.” A sudden dark suspicion barreled into her mind. “But you owe me one.”

“I hold no secrets from you. Not anymore.”

Oh, Rand, she thought with silent pain, I was so much happier when you did. Her voice cold, she stated, “I find it entirely too convenient that Lazare Mondragon happened to die at the moment you sought to force me to wed you.”

He gave her a furious, scorching look. For long moments he seemed not to breathe. Finally he said, “You go too far in accusing me of murder.”

“Do I, Englishman? You sneaked into my home, abducted me, braved Gaucourt’s
hobelars.
You do much in the name of King Henry. Why not murder?”

“Your uncle assured me a hasty annulment was being secured.” Bitterness tinged his voice.

She couldn’t control a twinge of empathy. Her uncle of Burgundy had taken in kings and emperors with half-truths and empty assurances. Why should she have expected Rand to see into the intrigue-ridden soul of Jean Sans Peur?

Yet she couldn’t allow her thoughts to show. “You went away for a fortnight in March. How do I know you didn’t journey to Paris, that Lazare didn’t die by your own hand?”

He traced his finger over her jawline, her throat. She tried to imagine that hand in a murderous grip around a defenseless man’s neck. Tried...and failed.

“You will only know that for certain when you decide to trust me.”

“Then I will never know. For I shall never trust you.”

He toyed with the cord binding one of her wrists. “Can I trust
you?
”

Although she knew he offered her a chance to be loosed from her bonds, she couldn’t help retorting, “You can trust that I will do everything in my power to thwart you.”

He sat silent while she tried to tear her gaze from the entrancing motion of his bare chest, rising and falling with each breath he took.

At last he spoke. “We’re together now. Isn’t that what we wanted all along?”

“I wanted Rand, not Enguerrand Fitzmarc!”

“We are one and the same.” He leaned down; his lips lay but a whisper away from hers. “It is our wedding night.” His tongue traced the curve of her ear. “You may rail at me ’til kingdom come, but in your heart you know our destinies are entwined. I wanted you as my wife. Now I have you.”

Appalled at the tangle of desire and fear roiling within her, she forced herself to regard him squarely. “You wanted my castle, not me.”

He smiled; clearly he heard the lack of conviction in her voice. He touched the pulse at her throat. “I want you, Lianna. Always.”

She tried to pull away. “Then you’d best keep me shackled with ropes, else I’ll never bear your advances.”

“I’d hold you with affection, not bonds,” he said, kissing her face, her neck.

The light flickered, limning his princely features in gold. The commanding beauty of his face, the compelling power of his caresses, raised a tingle deep in her center. The sensation radiated outward, filling her breasts, softening her woman’s flesh.

“You are lovely in the lamplight,” he murmured, his kisses fast and merciless on her face. “In sooth I always likened your coloring to silver, but tonight you look as precious and shining as new gold.” He caught her face between his hands and laid his lips upon hers. Fiercely she vowed that if her hands were not bound, she’d slap him away. Or would she?

Seared by the heat of his mouth, she found herself a prisoner of bonds stronger than velvet cords. His voluptuous kisses grew keener, sharp with sensual abandonment, and heavy with an allure that threatened to claim her wholly. Summoning her will, she turned her head aside. “Do not do that,” she said unsteadily.

His hands coursed down her sides, touching her with fire. He found her breasts through the fabric of her tunic, his fingers moving in ever-tightening circles. An intolerable ache rose in her. She bit her lip to keep from crying out.

A certain ruthlessness lay beneath the tenderness of his caresses, as if he sought to prove his sexual power over her.

“We’ve never made love in the dark before,” he mused. “Always we celebrated our love in sunshine.”

“It is doomed to be mourned in the dark now,” she snapped.

Briefly he pressed his lips to hers. “We need not be adversaries.”

“We are, and ever shall be. Think on it,
Enguerrand.
You are English and would give my castle to King Henry. I am French and would hold it until my dying breath.”

“I love you.”

“I despise you.”

“Do you?” He shook his head, smiled, and took her breath away with the swift and knowing stroke of his hand on her thigh. “Tell me you despise this.” His fingers played a familiar tune upon her flesh. “You love me. Someday you’ll tell me about it.”

“Never,” she swore, and would have launched into a fierce tirade had his mouth not stopped hers. He took her lips in a deep, drinking kiss while his hands—hands that knew her so well—aroused her body to an overwhelming level of sensitivity. His fingers made a slow, meandering path up her bare leg, under her tunic, stealing her will to resist him as his thumb brushed her softness.

Her body played the traitor, warming to an adversary’s alluring touch. Despite a growing sense of despair, she let her limbs go limp upon the bed while his hands and lips teased her thighs and breasts to burning arousal.

Deep in some hidden part of her she was glad of the bonds at her wrists; they took the decision to fight away from her.

“Oh, love,” he murmured, his lips following his fingers as they unlaced her tunic, “I’ve dreamed of making you my wife...you taste so sweet....”

Vaguely her mind took in the fact that he’d spoken in French. We battle in English, but make love in French, she thought fleetingly. When his hands parted her tunic and bared her breasts, she ceased to think at all.

She could feel only the fire of his caresses as he removed the rough garments she’d stolen from the laundry. He touched and teased until her every nerve went taut.

Naked and bound, she should have felt humiliated. Yet instead she felt wild and free, wanting him so badly she nearly wept.

His powerful body loomed like a craggy mountain, luring her to the summit.

“You want me,” he whispered against her mouth.

“Yes...” she breathed.

He braced himself above her. The heat of his kiss went straight to her core. He reached for her bound hands, laced his fingers with hers, and joined their bodies with a slow, aching stroke.

She arched toward him, meeting his thrusts, forgetting he was her enemy, bedding her as a conquest. She thought her hatred had banished the knight in the glade. But he was still there, turning her from intrepid dreamer to a woman fulfilled. She closed her eyes while her body drank in the essence of him—his powerful movements, his vibrant warmth, the taste of the love words that spilled from his lips.

His body covered hers; their hammering hearts beat as one. Sighing, she brought her arms around his neck.

And froze.

“Damn you.” She tried to squirm from beneath him. Humiliation misted her cheeks and neck with red. At some point during their lovemaking he’d untied her bonds. She could have fought him; the old Lianna could have resisted. But the person he’d made her had succumbed, too spellbound by his ardor to notice. Now she realized she was bound by something more formidable than velvet cords.

She summoned anger, but the fury was directed more at herself than at him. She’d dubbed him her enemy, yet she was a prisoner of desire, She’d vowed to resist him, yet she’d become his willing bedmate. He’d achieved his domination over her—not by force, but by tenderness.

You love me,
he’d said.
Someday you’ll tell me about it.

“Get off me, Englishman,” she commanded.

He moved aside, although he cradled her in his arms. She knew she should pull away, but she felt weary, lethargic. His body was so comfortable, circling hers with masculine warmth.

Propping himself on an elbow, he stared into her eyes. “I do mean to be husband to you.”

“And vassal to King Henry.”

“Aye, that too.” He gripped her shoulders. “Henry has brought order and prosperity to England. He can do the same for France.”

“So could the devil himself. But France will not countenance a foreigner on the throne.” She narrowed her eyes. “And I will not countenance an Englishman at Bois-Long.”

“You do not have a choice.”

The cold certainty in his voice jarred her. A vision of Burgundy’s implacable face swam into her mind. “What does my uncle mean to do?”

“He leaves for Compiègne at dawn, taking all his men with him. The Armagnacs are on their way to besiege the town.”

A shiver rippled through her. Damn Bernard of Armagnac and her uncle for ripping France into splinters with their ceaseless bickering. And damn Rand for having the knowledge before her. Then a satisfied smile curved her lips. “So my uncle leaves. I counted but ten men wearing your colors. Gaucourt will hold Bois-Long for me yet.”

He eyed her sharply. “For you, Lianna? Or for Gervais?”

She suppressed a twinge of alarm. “Gervais Mondragon has no claim on Bois-Long.”

“Save for the fact that he is Lazare’s heir, and installed at the château. Possession is the better part of the law.”

“So. You’ve styled yourself Baron of Longwood. What do you propose to do about Gervais and Gaucourt?”

“I propose to send them fleeing into the salt marshes.”

“With ten men against Gaucourt’s fifty? Your male pride is prodigious.” Her sarcasm seemed to make no impression on him. He merely smiled and toyed with a discarded velvet cord. He lifted it, watched it spin slowly, then dropped it on the floor. “I’m sorry I tied you,” he said. “I’ll not do it again...unless you force me to it.”

She tried to pull away. “It is the only way you’ll get me to submit to you again.”

He bent his head, brushing his lips over the peaks of her breasts. “Is it, Lianna?” he asked softly. His hand strayed downward, heating places on her body that had barely cooled from the last time. “Is it?”

Every wanton part of her strained toward his stroking hands and moist lips. Every rational part of her dredged up all the agony he’d caused her. He’d taken her innocence, deceived her heart, and had set his sights on her home. His body offered but fleeting moments of passionate forgetfulness, hardly enough to excuse his betrayal.

“Stop,” she said, but he seemed not to hear as he nuzzled her throat. She put her hands flat against his chest and pushed with all her might. He drew back, his handsome face framed by hair of beaten gold. His masculine beauty was intolerable.

“Don’t fight me,” he said.

Ice formed around her heart, and suddenly she wanted to hurt him with all the fury she felt. “I never wanted you, Englishman, not even when I thought you were Rand the Gascon.”

“You did,” he countered. “’Twas you who invited—”

“Did you never wonder why, you great fool? Or were you so self-important that you thought yourself irresistible?” She lashed him with the words, watching his face, seeing the certainty of his domination waver. Hurting him gave her disappointingly little satisfaction.

“You wanted to know about Lazare,” she forced out. “Then I shall tell you about him. He refused to lie with me, his wife, because he didn’t want to get me with child. Aye, he wanted his beloved Gervais to inherit.” Tears coursed down her cheeks and sank into the baudekin bolster. Angrily she wiped her face dry. “I needed an heir for Bois-Long.
That
was why I sought your attentions.” The incredulous look on his face nearly silenced her. Cruel words didn’t come as easily as they should. “It was my
only
reason,” she finished.