The Snow White Bride (28 page)

* * * * *

W
hen Eleanor locked the
door of the solar behind them, her smile was both shy and bold. She held Alexander’s gaze, her own eyes bright, even as her cheeks flushed with her audacity.

The lady was a marvel. Alexander loved the complexity of Eleanor, loved that she could be as regal as a warrior queen or as vulnerable as a new chick. She could defend him with the ferocity of a mother wolf, yet she surrendered to his kiss as softly as a blossom opens to the summer sun. He would never tire of her many moods, her quick wits, her ferocious defense of all she held dear.

She crossed the floor to him, reached up, and cupped
his chin in her hand. Her eyes were a clear, brilliant green, devoid of shadows and mysteries. She regarded Alexander as if he were the marvel, then touched her lips to his.

Her kiss was both languid and impassioned. She coaxed his response with the slightest touch and offered him a caress that made his blood simmer. It was the first time that she had initiated an embrace that Alexander did not wonder whether she sought to distract him, that he had not feared, at least a little, that she gave of herself in body to keep the secrets of her thoughts from his perusal.

They crossed the floor toward the bed as if in a dance, moving as one with nary a word exchanged. They feasted upon each other’s lips, tasting and teasing, their hands running ceaselessly over each other. It was as if they met for the first time, as if they each mate
d for the first time in their
days. Alexander was fairly deafened by the thunder of his pulse, and he felt a similar urgency in Eleanor’s heartbeat.

He undid the laces of her kirtle as she urged aside his tabard, kissing hungrily all the while. He shed his chemise while she kicked off her slippers; he loosed her chemise while she unlaced his chausses. He broke their kiss only to pull off his boots, watching as Eleanor shook out her hair.

She came to him, wearing naught but a smile, and pushed him back onto the mattress. She climbed atop him and kissed him fully, holding his hair as if she imagined he might try to evade her. The very notion would have made him laugh, had Alexander not had better deeds to do with his mouth.

Eleanor surrendered her all to Alexander, and did so with abandon. He could not believe the difference in her
manner; he would never have believed that she had so much more to grant to him. Telling the tale of Blanchefleur and finding sympathy in his household, perhaps the first compassion she had ever been shown, seemed to have softened Eleanor. She opened herself to Alexander and gave of the feast that only she could offer.

And he was smitten, in truth. He was in awe of his lady wife, of her strength and her ability to heal. He marveled that she had any shred of tenderness left within her, that she could even acknowledge the possibility that a man could offer more to her than all of the other men in her life had done.

He pleasured her as he had before and savored her eventual shout of release. She rolled atop him then, straddling him with her legs, her hair spilling around them like a curtain of gold. He caught her around the waist and lifted her above him, guiding her to sit atop him, in truth.

Eleanor laughed, clearly delighted with this pose. “You are my captive now,” she teased, her eyes dancing, as he wished they always had done.

“And a willing one, to be sure.”

She moved, making him catch his breath. “I may never release you,” she threatened.

“No man of wit would yearn for release from such captivity.”

Eleanor laughed. She moved with deliberation, quickly discerning what best enflamed him. She leaned down and kissed him again, her tongue dancing within his mouth. She caught his nape in her hand, holding him beneath her kiss as she rocked her weight atop him. Alexander caught her buttocks in one hand, then slipped his fingers between them.

“Together this time,” he told her between kisses, and she caught her breath as he caressed her. They fitted together as if they truly had been wrought for each other; they moved together as if they had been created to dance solely with each other. Alexander watched passion put sparkles in his lady’s eyes, watched her cheeks flush as her arousal reached its peak. He himself was on the threshold of pleasure—for what seemed a thousand years—as he waited for her to join him there.

She caught her breath suddenly and her eyes widened in pleasure. Her lips parted, her face flushed crimson, and before she could cry out, Alexander allowed himself to leap over that threshold alongside his lady wife. They shouted as one and clutched each other tightly; then in the wake of their release, she began to laugh.

“Surely my effort was not deserving of laughter,” he teased in a growl, and she laughed all the louder.

“Not that! Anthony will be certain that you find uncommon pleasure with your ledgers,” she said.

Alexander chuckled, then kissed her slowly. He knew an uncommon conviction that all would be aright between them, that they would only learn more about each other in the years they were to share, that their match would only grow better with each passing day.

And that was prize enough for any man.

* * * * *

E
lizabeth finally cornered
Malcolm in the hall after the midday meal, and managed to have him to herself. He was the one who could aid in her quest, and she wanted the chance to persuade him to her side without Alexander’s counsel.

“Malcolm,” she murmured after they had exchanged pleasantries. “I have a boon to ask of you.”

Malcolm smiled. “Surely any boon should be asked of Alexander. I have nothing to my name, save my own self, thus can grant little to a lady.”

Elizabeth gripped the cup of ale, which she did not desire. “I want to go to Ravensmuir.” Malcolm started, but she hastened onward. “I must go to Ravensmuir. I must seek out Rosa
munde and see to her welfare…”

Malcolm laid a hand upon her arm. “Elizabeth, Rosamunde is dead,” he said gently.

“No, no, it cannot be thus. How can you know? We have never found her corpse, nor that of Tynan. They could be alive still, in
the rubble, awaiting our aid…”

“Elizabeth!” Malcolm spoke so firmly that Elizabeth fell silent. “No soul could survive the collapse of Ravensmuir’s labyrinth, much less do so for months. Further, it would be foolhardy to venture into the rubble, for one cannot tell how it might shift.”

Elizabeth sat back on the bench and regarded her brother unhappily. “You will not take me there.”

“Do not even imagine that you should go there alone.”

Elizabeth frowned and looked away, fighting against her tears of disappointment. “I thought you would want to retrieve Uncle Tynan’s body, to know for certain of his demise, to see him buried with honor if necessary.”

Malcolm reached across the table and seized her hands, compelling her to look at him. “Why do you desire to do this? What do you think to find? It has been months since their disappearance, Elizabeth.”

She sighed and studied their interlocked hands. There was nothing to be lost in confessing all of the truth. “I
dream of Rosamunde, all the time. She is in the labyrinth and it is collapsing and she is summoning me to her aid.” She dared to meet Malcolm’s gaze, which was
compassionate. “I have to go. I
have to try to aid her.”

He shook his head and held fast to her hands. The warmth of him was reassuring. “It would be folly, Elizabeth, and you would not find what you would seek.”

“How can you know?”

“
They are dead, though it is not easy to believe as much.” Malcolm sighed. “I did not tell any of you this, but I dreamed of Maman and Papa after their demise at sea. I dreamed that they were calling for my aid, and I dreamed that I failed them. I must have had this dream two hundred times.” He met her gaze steadily. “Uncle Tynan found out, because I awakened shouting more than once. He told me that it was grief that wrought a tale in my thoughts. He told me that it would pass as I grew accustomed to my new truth.”

“And did it?” Elizabeth’s mouth was dry, for she did not like his counsel.

“It did. I do not have this dream any longer.” He forced a smile and squeezed her hands tightly. “I shall make you a wager, sister mine. I shall depart at Epiphany to find my fortune, and if, by the time I return, you are still plagued by this dream, then I shall take you to Ravensmuir.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.” Malcolm touched his cup to hers and Elizabeth drank with him. It was not what she had wanted of her brother, but as it was the best offer she was likely to have, Malcolm’s would have to suffice.

She hoped with vigor that Malcolm would not take overlong to find his fortune.

A
lexander and Eleanor coupled thrice before they dozed, exhausted, within the shadows of the great bed.
It
had fallen dark outside and the first stars could be seen through the window.

Eleanor’s fair hair was cast across Alexander’s chest and her legs were entangled with his. Her hand was curled within his own, both hands over his heartbeat, and he felt the sweet rhythm of her breath against his flesh. The great bed smelled lustily of the pleasure they had conjured and shared. Although he was hungry, Alexander was so fatigued that he could see no
compelling reason to stir…
until Eleanor shivered.

She nestled closer to him and he made to pull up the bedclothes. She yawned and made to sit up. “It is so late. I should fetch a morsel from the kitchens before all retire.”

“Do not be ridiculous. If you are hungry, I will go.”

“No, you are injured,” she said, her to
n
e allowing no argument. She pushed him back, her hand in the midst of his chest, and he fell back as if boneless.

“I am not so injured as that.” He caught her around the waist and pulled her atop him. “And it would not be chivalrous to let you fetch a meal.”

“You have need of your strength,” she chided. “I want that son.” Alexander shook his head, marveling at her insistence upon this single matter, even as she shivered. “And you are beneath my care, as I am the healer in this chamber,” she said, scolding him with a wag of her finger.

She would have looked more solemn—and less endearing—if her hair had not been so disheveled and her
bare breast had not been so pert in the chill. Alexander caught the weight of her breast in his hand, then ran his thumb across the turgid peak. She shivered.

“You are too cold. It is my noble intent to warm you,” he said, then kissed her nipple.

Eleanor caught her breath and stretched like a cat beneath his caress. “It is your noble intent to meet abed yet again.”

“I will see you well-pleased.”

“And so you already have!” she protested with a laugh. “We must have a morsel in our bellies, Alexander. You remain here, but you had best don some garb. It is cursed cold in this chamber and my father oft said that it takes heat to conjure a son.”

“Anthony has not been able to light the braziers with the portal locked against him,” Alexander said, impatient with her repeated references to sons. “Eleanor, understand that there is no need for haste in creating a child. Children will come in their time.”

“There is every need for haste,” she corrected. “Especially if you mean to grant your sisters the choice of whom they wed.” She rose from the bed, her pale flesh fairly glowing in the darkness, and scampered toward the pile of clothing they had cast on the floor.

“What is this?” Alexander was confused, but she did not say more. “What do you mean about my sisters’ nuptials? What can our having a son possibly have to do with that matter?”

Eleanor searched through the garb as the gooseflesh rose on her skin. She danced a little, for the floor was probably cold. “Oh, I shall be wrought of ice before I find my stockings!”

“It cannot matter what you wear.”

She gave him a look. “It always matters what the laird’s wife wears.”

“Women!” Alexander rose, but did not don the chemise she offered to him. “Wear whatsoever comes to hand!”

“No!” She regarded him with dancing eyes. “They still talk in the kitchens about me coming into the hall with slippers that did not match after our vows were consummated.”

Alexander grinned. “Your laces were bunched as well. I recall fixing them.”

“How could you not have told me?”

“It was not your slippers I noticed.”

She granted him a glare that would have been more fearsome if her eyes had not twinkled so. “Then be of aid to me, lest all of Kinfairlie laugh at the laird’s smitten wife.”

He reached for her boots. “Don these first.”

She shook her head, her teeth fairly chattering. “Not those.”

“Whyever not? You are cold!”

“Because it is not proper to wear boots in the hall. I will wear slippers, if I can find them. Here is one stocking at least.” She rummaged without so much as a tinder lit to aid her in her task. He cursed, not for the first time, at the notions of women and their garb.

“You will wear slippers and be cold rather than breach some foolish convention?” He sat down on the trunk there, pulled her onto his lap, and made to pull one boot onto her foot. “Eleanor, this is folly
,
” was all he managed to say before she cried out in pain.

He pulled off her boot and peered into it. There was something dark lurking in the fur lining. Eleanor sat silent on his knee, rubbing the base of her foot as he inverted her boot.

Two thorns spilled into his hand, thorns as large and as fearsome as those that had pierced Uriel’s hide. He glanced across the chamber, but the three Owen had surrendered to him still rested on the opposite table.

This additional pair lurked in her boot—the boot she had not wished to don—as if hidden there. The key to the chamber glinted upon her belt, discarded in a coil by his very feet.

Eleanor gasped and Alexander met her gaze. Days past he might have taken her expression as one of guilt, as if some dark scheme h
ad been discovered. “I suppose I
am to think that you had too many thorns for your purpose this day, that you saved some for a similar feat on another day,” he mused, and she caught her breath. “You did not, after all, wish to don your boots. A man could believe that you knew the thorns to be hidden there.”

Eleanor scarce breathed while Alexander rolled the thorns across his palm. But if she had known about these thorns, if she had been the one to injure Uriel, then she had not only tried to kill him—perhaps twice—but had lied to him over and over again.

It could not be so.

Alexander wanted the marriage he had tasted this very afternoon. He wanted the match they had only begun to share—and that meant that he must trust his lady wife, just as she had shown that she trusted him.

He held the thorns before his ashen wife. “Have you a better explanation?”

Eleanor rose to her feet, looking small and fragile. Her gaze fell on the key tied to her own belt. Then she looked at him, fear in her eyes. “I have none,” she whispered. “I know nothing of them, certainly not from whence they came.”

Alexander rose to his feet. “Then we must find who in the household seeks to see you blamed for what you have not done.”

Eleanor’s features lit with such pleasure that he knew he had chosen aright. She cast herself toward him, but he had no chance to savor her embrace.

For the sentries blew their horns with force in that moment, and men shouted in the bailey. “Kinfairlie is besieged!” roared one man, and Alexander hastened to the window.

It was true. A veritable army rode toward the keep, the moonlight glinting off their armor and their unsheathed blades. They were numerous and fully armed, their company stretching into the distance. Alexander’s heart sank, for he doubted their force could be turned aside.

“Unlock the portal!” he cried to Eleanor. “We are attacked.” He donned his chemise, his chausses, and threw open the trunk containing his mail as he donned his boots. He heard a shout at the gates and knew he had no time to arm himself properly.

“But it is the peace of Christmas—”

“Our assailants seem not to care.” Alexander shrugged into his tabard and snatched up his blade. Eleanor meanwhile unlocked the portal, her eyes wide with fear. “Find some garb to cover yourself, gather with my sisters, and see this portal barred against all assailants,” he bade her, and she nodded understanding.

Then she seized his sleeve. “But surely you will be triumphant?”

“Surely it is only good sense to be cautious. Secure yourself with my sisters,” he said, then caught her nape in his hand. He kissed her deeply, lingeringly, then departed the solar in haste.

Alexander, despite his injured leg, lunged down the stairs, taking them three at a time, sparing only a moment to hammer on the door of the chamber his sisters shared. “Lock yourselves, all of you, in the solar,” he bade Vera, then made haste to the hall.

There was already the clash of steel against steel and the smell of blood in his own hall. Alexander was not the only one to have been surprised. Kinfairlie could be defended by few men, but only if the attackers did not manage to enter the hall. This battle, he feared, would be decided quickly and not in his favor.

He leapt into the fray, swinging his blade at a mercenary. He had done his best for Kinfairlie, he would do his best until his dying breath, but he feared in this moment that his best had not been enough.

This battle would be the reckoning that he had long expected, and Alexander Lammergeier hoped that he would be the only one to pa
y the price for his own failure.