The Temptation (The Medieval Knights Series) (8 page)

"What say you?"

"I said, my courses have begun. We cannot consummate the marriage," she said, enjoying the look of shock on his face. He did not look so composed now.

"Now? Just now? You are certain?"

"Yea, just now." Thanks be to God and the perfection of His time. "And I am certain. This is not the first time for me, my lord. I know what I am about," she said. If her grin was somewhat superior, she did not suppose she could be faulted for it.

"But... we are wed today," Hugh said.

He seemed to be having some difficulty grasping the fact that she would not share his bed. Perfect. His taunt about her fainting at his kiss was almost forgiven. Almost.

"Aye, we are; yet, if I had been consulted I could have told the priest, my father, and you that now was not the best time for it. Yet I was not consulted. I know my body's rhythms; my father does not."

"Aye," he said, running a hand through his golden hair, twisting the strands until all was a shimmering jumble of brown and gold and flaxen white.

He could do what he wished with his hair; he was not going to touch her. Not for a week at the very least. A week. A long week. Had God not created the world in a week? Surely it was well within His grasp to wrench her from this marriage in the same number of days.

It was the first time Hugh had not had to coax a smile from her. Nay, she smiled most freely. He did not seem to appreciate her good humor.

"You do not seem dismayed," he said, frowning slightly.

"Do I not?" she said, all sprightly cheer. "Well, I suppose I can wait a week for our bond to be set before God and church. Can you?"

He straightened at that and left off the ruffling of his hair. "I have been challenged," he said, looking down at her. She straightened and met his look; her own hair was perfectly ordered, as was her composure. "Aye, I can wait a week for you, little wife, but now I think that you will not be so content to wait a week for me."

"I do not know—"

"Ah, yea, you know," he said, cutting her off while he ran a fingertip over the waves of her hair. "I accept your challenge, wife. I will not be the one to pant after you; at least I will promise you not to be alone in my panting. Nay, for I shall wring a cry from you, and only when I have your cry upon my lips will I take possession of you."

The images were too strong, of taking and of crying out in passion and of his coming for her, pursuing her with all the relentless heat of dogs after a boar. She would be the boar for no man. He would not make her pant, and her only cries would be the soulful cries of devoted prayer. She would prove that to him, taking up the challenge he had set before her. He would not make her into something she was not. She would never be a woman who panted for a man.

"You will wait long, my lord. If that is your plan, then this marriage will never be consummated." Another oft-spoken prayer.

"You do not understand men, Elsbeth, if you say that. A man challenged is a man who must then win. What is more certain is that you do not understand me."

She did not want to understand him. She only wanted him out of her life so that she could escape the burden of men. Did he understand nothing of her wants and wishes? Nay, he did not. His thoughts were all of himself, which was very like a man.

"I cannot stand here," she said, wanting to be away from him and his vows and challenges. He was just like men as she knew them to be: self-serving, arrogant, and proud. She understood men well enough and had no wish to understand them better. "I bleed, I tell you. I must away."

"Then away, Elsbeth, and I with you. I am your husband, ever at your side, in need or without," he said, placing his arm about her and hurrying her from the chapel.

"I cannot walk so fast." she said, tripping over her skirts. "I do not need your assistance in this."

"Aye, but I am a husband of an hour. I need to be needed. I need to be with you, even if I cannot take you, planting my scent upon you and within you, feeling you shift beneath me, holding me within your heat."

"Stop! This is not speech a maid should hear," she said, putting her hands over her ears.

"Ah, maiden wife, you are right in that, but you shall hear it and feel the need for me grow in your belly and in your blood, until you beg to be freed of your maidenhead. Until you pant my name and cannot think beyond having my hands upon you. That is what this week will bring you. That is my task."

"This is no worthy task," she said, pulling away from him, wanting her own space to breathe and think and move. She did not want his hands upon her. She never would. If only he would believe that of her, then this marriage could end today.

God above, let this marriage end today.

"I have a maiden wife who will be a maiden still. It is the task I find before me. What can I do but meet it?" he said, grinning.

He caught her up against him and held her like a babe to his chest. The ground seemed leagues beneath her, and she held onto his neck without thinking. The smell of him was like goldenrod and honey, golden and sweet and wild.

It was certainly not how a knight should smell.

"My garments will be stained if you hold me like this. Let me down. Let me find my own way, I say again, I know what I am about."

"I am not afeared of blood, Elsbeth. I know the scent and look of it too well. If your garment is stained, I will buy you ten more to replace it, but I will not relinquish you. That price is too high. The feel of you in my arms is worth ten gowns and a cloak of ermine beside."

"You talk of cloaks of ermine when all this is about is a woman and her courses. Or a man who has found his will thwarted by the flow of blood." Aye, he had bumped against God's provision for her and was bruised. A lovely thought. Now, if only he would break and set her free.

He looked hard at her and then smiled, pressing her to him even more. He was a hard man and hot. For all he complained of the cold, he was so very hot.

"Aye, you speak true. My will is thwarted." He looked at her and pressed a kiss to her brow and then he whispered, "I want you. I want you, Elsbeth. I want the dark and solemn beauty of you to break over me like the rising dawn after a night of storms and wild winds. I want the softness of your skin to be my only contact with the earth. I want your breath to feed me. I want—"

"Stop!" she said, burying her face against his neck, shutting out the sight of him, but not the scent and not the feel. He surrounded her.

She could easily learn to hate him.

"Aye, I will, but only because we are at the hall. Let us put a happier face on this for your father."

"Nay! Say naught to him."

He looked into her eyes and smiled slowly. "I will say nothing. Let him think what he will think. Our time and our tidings are our own. I will not betray."

He took the steps in stride, the weight of her seeming no more than a cloak he carried. The lights and noise of her father's holding came to her first and then the smells. The way to the upper chambers lay across the hall. They would need to cross all of it to reach the room that was hers. She did not know how she would manage a passage of such distance with her dignity intact. Perhaps there was no way.

The sounds of the hall quieted as they entered. And then there came the laughter.

"Did she faint again?" her father called out. "She is too much at her prayers, that one."

"Nay, she did not faint," Hugh said, and she could hear the smile in his voice, the good humor he projected to the very rafters. "I am a husband newly made; am I to be faulted if I want the feel of my wife in my arms? Is Elsbeth not to be praised for giving in to my whims so readily?"

And so it ended before it had even begun. Her father was silenced, her dignity no more than bruised, and they were across the hall and climbing the stairs to her chamber.

"Take note, Elsbeth," Hugh said as he climbed the dark and twining passage. "If you would still a tongue, speak long and speak well, stilling all opposition by your very breath."

"It takes a mighty breath to still my father," she said, looking over his shoulder and back down the stair as the noise of the hall resumed its normal sound.

"As you say," he said, laughing. "But I have breath enough, have no fear."

"Of that, I do have no fear," she said, looking at his profile.

How that he could keep such good cheer about him? She never knew a man to be so winsome for so little cause. She had no cause to complain, except that it did make him more difficult to resist. Temptation's package was ever sweet.

He elbowed past the heavy door and then set her down in her chamber. All was dark within; the fire had not been lit, nor the tapers. The wind was rising without, dark clouds of purple and ash gray rolling across a darkening sky. The westering sun was hidden behind heavy clouds and thrashing treetops, moving relentlessly away, leaving them all in growing darkness.

The blood ran in ever growing force down her leg.

"Go now," she said.

"Go? Now?" he said, looking at her like a newborn calf.

"Aye," she said, pushing him from the chamber with her hands on his massive chest. Did women not bleed in Jerusalem when their courses ran? "Now!"

He backed up at her words, letting her force him from the chamber. "I will go, but I will remain without. I will not leave."

"Aye, I am much comforted," she said, shaking her head at his declaration. He could go back to far Jerusalem for all she cared at that moment. In fact, she would prefer it.

When the door was secured against him, she knelt by her trunk and pulled out her binding cloth and pad of lamb's wool. Lifting her skirts, she secured all somewhat clumsily.

Could she not hear him breathing at the door? And then she wiped the smear of blood from her legs with a dampened cloth. Thank God above she had chosen to wear a crimson garment. Her chemise had taken the worst of it; she needed to don a new one, which would require that she remove all and begin from the skin out.

Did she not hear her husband moving impatiently at the door? She drew the curtain that covered the door against drafts, shutting him out still further. With that last barrier in place, she removed her garments.

It was when she was completely naked that he knocked again, softly yet insistently.

She jumped and whirled, her chemise wadded to her chest.

"What is it?" she hissed.

"Someone comes."

"I can do nothing as to that," she said, pulling the chemise over her head. It was slow work; she was unaccountably clumsy.

He banged upon the door with his fist. "Let me in. I will not be found upon the doorstep."

"Aye, it is better to be found banging at my door. That will cause no comment in the hall," she said to the door, fumbling with her clothing.

He was not helping her, though she could not think that he would care as to that. He only wanted to get in. The state of her dress was not his concern. Nay, but it was hers.

"Better to find me breaking down the door of an unwilling and chill wife than to find me sitting in the doorway like an errant dog," he said, his mouth obviously pressed to the door.

"I am not unwilling, merely unable," she said. "I have done nothing. This is not my fault.''

Her chemise was on, as was her pelisse. She could have let him in, but she was reluctant to receive him without shoes and stockings. And she needed to remove the pile of bloody garments on the floor.

"You have surely done nothing. That will be proved on the morrow," he said. "Or in the next instant. I think it is your father who comes."

She opened the door at that and pulled him inside. He closed the door behind them and bolted it. She tried to hide the bloody evidence of her flux with a kick of her foot, but he looked exactly where she did not want.

"It is true, then," he said, "though it is difficult to see in this dim light. Can we not light a taper?"

"I can see very well," she said. "And I do not lie. And some things, such as this, are private."

"So, is that your way of saying we cannot light a taper?" he said, smiling softly.

Why did he turn everything to jest and mirth and laughter? Could he not see that life was a solemn affair of duty and service? Could he not see that she did not want him in her life?

"Light it if you will," she said, turning from him to pick up her soiled clothes, "but I am not staying."

"Oh, yea, you will stay," he said, leaning against the door with his arms crossed over his chest. He had mighty arms and shoulders like an ox. He was more formidable than any iron bolt "We cannot leave, not till morn when the whole world of Warkham will know and record that we have performed our marital duty."

"As I said, I do not lie," she said. "And I will not, especially not about this."

She was untouched and would remain so. Would that the world would know she was a maiden still. The whole world, yet not her father. He would be most displeased that his plans had tilted against a will and power mightier than his own.

"Then do not lie, but lie with me this night. Our night will be chaste, yet I will have your company, Elsbeth. None other shall claim you."

"None other seeks me," she said. "I do not understand why you would want to... want to spend the night closeted with me when there can be... there will be no..."

"Consummation?"

"Copulation," she said.

"At least you did not say fornication. That would have wounded me greatly," he said, his smile as firmly in place as ever.

He did love to jest at her expense. She had no liking for it. Yet when did that ever stop a man?

"I have no desire to wound you," she said, still holding her bloody garments. She really had to get them in water. "Now I must away."

"Nay, you must not."

"You really have no idea what a woman's needs are at such a time, do you?" she said, pushed to the edge of her patience, of which she had a bounteous supply, easily a match to her famous serenity. A bottomless supply, until Hugh had stumbled into her life.

"As much as any unmarried man," he said. "But I know what my needs are very well. I need only to have you with me this night. It is not so great a need to meet, is it, Elsbeth? It is a nigh great need in my heart. To have you lie with me, to touch your face, to watch you while you sleep and hold you in my arms, to talk with you as the owls scour the air on silent wings... all this is my need, and all you must do to satisfy it is to lie with me on this bed. Now."