The Warrior's Wife (10 page)

Rafe’s smile was swift and bitter. “Believe me my lady, it hasn’t been for lack of Godsol effort that Glevering is your dowry. We’ve tried by fair means and foul, but neither court nor war has served us. All our persistence has won is Daubney determination to destroy us for all time.” He gave a quiet laugh. “Your sire even tried to break my sire’s heart.”

At Kate’s startled look he grinned again, the movement of his mouth more natural this time. “Before your parents were wed, my sire courted your dam. Your father paid your maternal grandsire a great sum to have the woman my father desired. We Godsols say this expenditure was simply for spite’s sake. Because my father wanted her your sire made certain the Godsols didn’t get her.”

Thoughts whirling, Kate struggled to absorb all Rafe told her. Words jumbled in her brain, only to fall past her lips before she quite knew what she intended to say.

“How strange that nothing you’ve tried has worked to restore Glevering to you. Perhaps our Lord has different plans for your family and that property. Do you suppose that since a marriage was the cause of all your Godsol losses, He deems some future marriage will restore Glevering to you?”

As Kate heard herself she flinched. Oh Lord, but Adele had been right to despair over her daughter-by-marriage’s propensity for speaking when she shouldn’t. Now Rafe would think her a fool, for no one could ever believe their families’ feud might ever relax enough for a Daubney and a Godsol to marry.

* * *

Surprise rendered Rafe wordless. Had he heard rightly? Was Kate proposing to marry him?

Rafe stared down at the woman he’d expected to force into wedlock. Numerous tiny rents played havoc with her sleeveless green overgown. Her undergown, a slightly darker green than the upper garment, had suffered far worse damage; one narrow sleeve had been torn from wrist to shoulder, revealing the full length of her slender arm. Her head was bare; she must have lost her cap in the wild dash down the hill. One of her plaits had opened. Thick, dark hair tumbled over her shoulder, reaching well past her waist.

A shaft of longing tore through him, so powerful that it rocked Rafe back on his heels. His mind supplied the image and sensation of Kate’s hair streaming over his bared chest. Another image followed, that of a naked Kate lying like some wanton on the bedclothes. Not just any bedclothes, but his. Oh Lord, but the idea of a willing Kate in his bed on their wedding night was as intoxicating as fine wine.

As if she too, felt the gnaw of his new hunger, heat warmed the quiet depths of Kate’s gray eyes. Sudden color brushed her cheeks. Her lips parted.

Rafe’s heartbeat lifted to a new pace. It was all the invitation he needed. Cupping her face in his hands, he stroked his thumbs over the slant of her cheekbones. Her skin felt like silk against his naked fingers.

Kate’s eyes closed and she sighed. Rafe’s blood boiled. He touched his lips to hers, a brief press of flesh to flesh. Again her mouth was soft and sweet beneath his. A moment later and she moved as she had in the alcove, shifting toward him until her body melded against his.

Need blazed in Rafe, pleading for immediate satisfaction. His mouth took hers, his lips demanding the response he knew she could give him. For a moment, Kate melted against him, offering what he wanted and more, then she gasped against his mouth. Bracing her hands against his chest as if to push, although she made no attempt to force him back from her, she tore her mouth free from his and looked up at him. Embarrassment and longing mingled in her expression.

“You mustn’t kiss me,” she chided, but her words came out breathless and soft. “Indeed, we mustn’t even touch. It’s wrong.”

Rafe hands closed over hers. “Not to kiss you my lady, is to die a thousand deaths,” he said, the words coming without effort, having been uttered to so many women.

Pleasure washed a pretty pink over Kate’s cheeks. What seemed like triumph flashed through her gaze. The corners of her mouth strove to rise. “Is that a Godsol admitting to some care for a Daubney?” she murmured. As she spoke she cast her gaze downward, her lashes making perfect crescents against her smooth cheeks.

“You know I care for you,” he said, only hearing the truth in his words as they fell from his lips. Of course he cared for Kate, he would always care for her. A wife was a man’s property to cherish and protect.

That thought brought with it the image of Kate cradled in his embrace and savoring his strength. He needed to feel all of her against him. Now.

Rafe stroked his hand up the length of her exposed arm. Her skin felt smooth to his touch. She freed a shaken breath, then her head lifted until their gazes met. Heat put color in her cheeks. Pleading for more such caresses lived in her gray eyes.

The fire in his belly became an inferno. No matter what words she might spill, her body told the truth. She wanted him.

His arms slipped around her. Feeling her loosened hair against his hands only drove need higher. With but the slightest of pressure on her back he urged her closer to him. Triumph rushed through him when she did as he wanted and leaned against him. Her hands slipped up and over his shoulders until she laced her fingers at his nape. Rafe damned the thickness of his leather vest. Save for that, he might have felt her breasts against his chest.

Again she raised her head to him, once more inviting him to claim her mouth as his own. Rafe lowered his head until their lips were but a breath apart then couldn’t bring himself a whit closer. Need for her flooded him, taunting, pulsing, demanding. And still he couldn’t bring himself to touch his mouth to hers.

Kate made a tiny impatient sound. Her eyes opened. Questions filled her gaze.

Only then did Rafe understand himself. Other women he took, using them as he would, but not Kate, never Kate. By his will and her words, she was fated to be his wife, the woman who would share his bed for all the days of his life. He needed to know she desired him and that he alone would be her passion.

“You have told me I mustn’t kiss you, my lady. If a kiss is what you want, then it must be you who kisses me,” he whispered. With each word, his lips brushed hers, the sensation a most delicious torment. It was true. Not to kiss her was to die, but it was the sweetest sort of death he’d ever imagined.

Kate hesitated, a tiny furrow marking her smooth brow. Then, just when he feared she would retreat, she touched her mouth to his. Rafe groaned against her lips, so wondrous was the sensation. His. She was his, and she wanted him.

Her mouth moved on his just a little, then again. Rafe shivered at her innocent attempt to stir his desire. Oh God, to think that he and no other man would teach her the joy that could be had between them.

That thought was his undoing. Need exploded in him. His arms tightened about her until she was crushed against him. His mouth took hers, demanding, nay, pleading that she yield to him. She gasped against his onslaught then met his need with her own. His mouth left hers to kiss a path along the slender line of her jaw. Kate’s breath came in tiny pants. He pressed a kiss against her ear. She gasped at the caress then arched against him.

A tremor racked Rafe as the mound of her womanhood came to rest against his aching shaft. Putting a hand at the small of her back to hold her against him, he moved his mouth along her neck, kissing his way down toward her collarbone. Each caress wrung a shiver from her, and each of her shivers drove his own desire all the higher. Again she arched against him as she sought to make herself one with him.

“Kate,” he murmured against her skin. “Love me, Kate.”

“Lady Katherine! Katherine de Fraisney! Where are you?” Josce’s bellow echoed across the woodland to drive a stake through Rafe’s desire.

Kate gave a sharp cry and sprang back from him as if pricked. Panting and trembling, she stared at him. Her eyes were as wide as a startled doe’s. Rafe groaned in disappointment. Worse, her absence from his arms left him feeling a strange emptiness, as if a great part of him had gone missing.

“Lady Katherine!” called Amicia de la Beres. “Can you shout to us, so we know where to find you?”

Kate shot a panicked look in the direction of the cries then caught at her loosened hair as if her mere touch might disguise it. “Dear Lord, but I shouldn’t have--we mustn’t,” she stuttered, then caught hold of her panic.

An instant later she drew herself up to her tallest and crossed her arms before her, once again every inch the proper woman he’d taken into the window embrasure. Rafe’s heart twisted as he watched her shed her desire for him as if it was an unneeded cloak. Soon, he promised himself, soon she’d wear both desire and him as he pleased.

Lifting her head, she turned in the direction of her rescuers. “I’m here!” she cried out, then once more looked at him. “You must go, but before you do, I cannot help but say it. What you’ve done--”. She stopped, a start of guilt shooting through her gaze. “Nay, what we’ve done,” she amended herself, pleasing Rafe that when she owned her part of their shared passion, “it’s wrong, and we daren’t ever do it again.”

“Wrong?” Rafe protested, caught off guard by her accusation. “How can it be wrong for a--”. He caught himself just before he spilled the rest of what he meant to say: for a husband to desire his wife. That knot in Rafe’s heart tightened. Kate wasn’t his wife, not yet. Nay, she wasn’t, but she would be as soon as he took her for his own.

The thought cut Rafe to the bone. Only then did he recognize the opportunity he’d just lost. Jesus God, what a fool he was! For the last quarter-hour, he’d been alone with Kate. Why hadn’t he simply taken her on his horse and left with her?

Understanding followed on the edges of his retreating lust. Kidnapping the Daubney heiress was what a Godsol bent on revenge would do. But he wasn’t just a Godsol. He was Rafe, who wanted Kate, let her family name be damned. He wanted her as a wife, his loving wife, not as a prisoner to whom property was attached. Aye, and now that he’d had another taste of a willing Kate in his arms, he’d better find a way to take her soon. If not, he swore he’d die for the wanting of her.

Standing less than arm’s length away yet well beyond his reach, his Kate shot him another flustered glance. “You know it’s wrong. How you can drive all sense from my brain is beyond me, but now that I know you do it, it won’t happen again.” Her words had the sound of a vow in them, but the desire that yet stained her fair cheeks made them a lie. “Now go. If my sire rides with them, he’ll kill you should he find you here, and that I could not bear.”

Rafe almost smiled. She couldn’t bear the thought of his death. That went far to ease her accusation that there was something wrong about their mutual desire.

“Then I’ll leave you, my lady, but only most reluctantly,” he replied.

Making his way to his horse on legs that still felt like thread after their kiss, he swung up into his saddle. Kate followed to stand at his mount’s shoulder and look up at him. At the back of Rafe’s brain lodged the image of a willing, loving Kate in his bed. That’s what he wanted.

Kate’s expression sobered until it was shy and somewhat pained. “I pray you don’t think ill of me. I tell you truly, I’ve never before behaved this way with anyone. I don’t know why it is that you...”. Her voice trailed off into silence as she gave an almost embarrassed shrug.

Happiness spiked in Rafe. There was no doubting the honesty of her words. Did she realize that in telling him this she also told him that the affection she believed she had for Sir Warin was no affection at all? Against that, how could she still want him for her champion on the morrow?

The need to beg her to refuse de Dapifer and name him in the steward’s stead filled Rafe. He swallowed the words. He wasn’t supposed to know about her plans with her father’s man, nor was there any way to broach the subject without revealing that he’d spied on her.

“My lady, when I think of you, it is only with the highest regard,” Rafe said at last. It was true. How else did a man think of a cherished wife?

Pleasure warmed Kate’s face and glowed softly in her smile. “I thank you for that,” she said quietly, then shook free of what troubled her to regain a more normal mien. “Since it seems I’ll not be there to watch it, I’ll wish that you take this day’s prize.”

Inspiration struck like lightning. Leaning down, Rafe took her hand and raised her fingers to his lips. “If I fail you this day then I vow I’ll take the morrow’s prize in your honor,” he promised her.

Pretty color again washed over Kate’s face. The need to sweep her up into his arms and ride from here with her tugged at Rafe. His hand on hers tightened.

“Call to us again, Lady Katherine,” Josce shouted, now no more than three hundred yards distant, “so we can find you.”

With a gasp Kate tore free of his grasp and pivoted in the direction of her rescuers. When she turned back to him naught but worry for him marked her face. “Go,” she urged, her brow creased as she stepped back from his horse. “Now, before they see you.”

With a nod, Rafe set his heels to his mount and started away from Josce’s call. It wasn’t until he was well out of Kate’s sight that he touched a hand to his breast. Coiled beneath his leather vest was one of Kate’s ribbons, the one from her open plait. He’d found it dangling from a broken hornbeam branch on his way down the hill. He’d taken it as his own mostly because he knew she meant to give Sir Warin its mate. The thought that Bagot’s steward might have more of Kate than he did was intolerable.

Not that anyone would know either he or Sir Warin had Kate’s ribbon. Rafe dared not wear his where others might see, especially not his brother. Will would never understand why Rafe hadn’t taken Kate at the same time he took the ribbon. As for the steward, Rafe didn’t think Sir Warin bold enough to wear his where Lord Bagot could witness it. At the very least Kate’s sire would be enraged that his steward had formed a relationship with his daughter; at the worst, Sir Warin would lose his position, if not his life, for his pursuit of Kate.

Kicking his horse into a trot, Rafe rode in a great circle around Kate’s position on his way to rejoin the hunt. As he went his thoughts turned to the morrow’s joust. Yesterday winning that competition meant only lining his slim purse; his goal now was to take the prize in Kate’s honor. Once he had done that, she’d know he was the better man and her heart would be his. All that remained then would be to marry her.