Through a Dark Mist (30 page)

“Lucien,” she cried softly. “Lucien—”

“Hush,” he commanded, and stripped the gauntlets from his hands before lifting them to cradle either side of her tear-streaked face. “You have worked enough of your cleverness on me for one night.”

She melted into his kiss, savouring the devouring heat of his lips. When she could bear no more without the threat of a faint, she pressed her cheek into the crook of his neck and surrendered herself to the comfort of his arms.

“Take me away from here, Lucien,” she begged. “Take me away … now! Tonight! I am so afraid!”

“There is nothing to fear,” he assured her, smoothing the blonde wisps of her hair.

“As long as it is your intention to fight tomorrow, I will know nothing but fear.”

This time his mouth could win no response and he sighed. “Servanne, I cannot simply walk away from the evil here at Bloodmoor Keep. Perhaps … if it were just my own name and honour demanding vengeance, I could happily and willingly forsake it in order to take you away from this place forever. But it was my father who died a traitor’s death, starved in his cell like a mongrel, his name spat upon by men who believed Etienne’s lies. I can no more walk away from my responsibilities to the memory of Robert Wardieu, than I could turn my back on my most solemn pledge to the queen to see the Princess Eleanor brought back to safety.”

Servanne bowed her head and pressed her face against the thickness of his quilted doublet. He was right, of course, and it was unfair of her to think only of her own wants and needs, but it was also suddenly, shamelessly impossible to think of anything else.

Lucien drew his hands away, reluctantly forcing a space between their bodies. He reached up to disengage her arms from around his neck, but she only clung to him more determinedly and raised huge, glistening blue eyes to his.

“You must go back,” he urged gently. “You have already been absent from the keep too long.”

“Lucien—”

He shook his head and placed a finger lightly over her lips. “And you must not call me Lucien. Not yet. Not while there are a thousand things to betray us.”

“Betray us? How?”

“A loose tongue, an unguarded look. The Dragon is keen and clever; his suspicions must not be roused so near the end.”

She tightened her arms still further and drew herself up so that their mouths were only a breath apart and elsewhere, their bodies were not even that.

“Promise me,” she pleaded. “Promise me this will not be the end for us.”

“Has your confidence in La Seyne’s abilities gone the way of your expectations for the Black Wolf’s success?”

“Promise me,” she insisted, ignoring his feeble attempt at humour. “Give me your most solemn pledge, then I know it will be so.”

Lucien’s gray eyes studied her intently, his body responded to hers despite the armoured strength of his will.

“My pledge, madam,” he said softly, “is that when this matter is settled, we will bathe together, and often, in the grotto by the Silent Pool. Moreover, we will discuss this stubborn streak of yours. We will discuss it until you are too exhausted to plague me with it ever again.”

Servanne’s eyes shone as they drifted down to his lips. “Your word is your honour, monseigneur, and I do not question it … but … is there no other means of sealing a most solemn vow?”

Lucien was still as a statue; Servanne’s cheeks flamed as hot as fire.

“You will be missed—”

“I have spent these past few nights alone, feeling missed by no one,” she countered poignantly. “Aching for something … I knew not what until tonight.”

“Servanne—”

“For you, my lord. I ache for you. I ache with the loneliness and emptiness I feel when you are not near me. I know I dishonour myself in asking, but … but I would feel you inside me once more,” she whispered haltingly. “I would feel you banish the emptiness, and fill it with some small part of your courage and strength that I might carry it with me through whatever may come on the morrow.”

Neither Lucien the man, the outlaw Wolf, nor the vaunted Randwulf de la Seyne Sur Mer knew what to say or do to counter the powerful intoxicant of her eyes. His hands were less than steady as he cradled her face between them; the sight of her tears, flowing in wet shiny streaks to her chin made them even less so.

“There is … no time,” he said raggedly. “The risk—” “The risk is that we might neither of us have this chance again. You said yourself, a thousand things might betray us —a slipped tongue, an unguarded look …”

His thumbs came tenderly together over her lips to silence her. They parted again, brushing reverently over the damp tearfall, and when they failed to staunch the liquid flow, his mouth took up the challenge, moving over her lashes, her cheeks, trailing lower to collect the salty sweetness that eluded him. A groan sent his tongue plunging helplessly into the velvety recesses of her mouth, and she tasted the curse that brought his lips slanting more forcefully over hers. She felt the tremors in his arms as he gathered her close again, and she felt his desire, rising bold and insistent between them.

“Love me,” she pleaded. “Love me, Lucien, that I might know what we shared was not just a dream.”

He swore again as the shivered plea rippled through his body. There was no use denying the hunger that raged within him, no use resisting the lithe and supple body that clung to his with a feverish desire. Their mouths came apart and met again, broke apart and met, and he knew he was lost. His fingers searched after the ribbands and fasteners that bound her clothes in place, and the woolen cloak was flung aside, billowing away like a dark sail in the shadows. Layers fell rapidly to the impatience of lips and hands, and when there was only the slippery thin sheath of her linen undergarment between them, he stood back, his eyes burning with passion, growing darker with promise as he pulled and tugged aside his own bulky clothes.

Shivering with the remembered power of all that flesh being laid bare before her, Servanne stepped up when he had completed but half the task. She ran her hands across the hard breadth of his chest, her fingers combing through the storm of crisp, curling hairs. She found the darker islands of his nipples and a smothered gasp sent her leaning into his heat. Her lips closed around one of the sensitive aureoles, caressing his flesh with a hunger that prompted a muffled hiss of a breath from between his teeth.

He was still flinging aside points, belts, and hose when he dropped down onto his knees in front of her. His hands skimmed up her thighs, raising the sheath to her waist, then her breasts. The last of his patience was expended as he tore the flimsy garment in two, barely troubling to cast it aside before his hands were cupped around her flesh and his lips were feasting on the bared bounty.

Servanne curled her arms around his neck and staggered against his warm, wet manipulations. She shuddered at each swirling turn of his tongue and cried out as his lips kneaded and suckled and worshipped the firm white pillows of flesh until they were blushing as pinkly as the rest of her heated body.

He drew her down onto his bended knees and she did not resist. He guided a snowy white thigh to either side of his waist and his hands cradled the softness of her hips holding her against him with an apologetic urgency.

“Yes,” she gasped. “Oh yes—!” And the gasp became a husked cry as he lowered her smooth, yielding flesh over his straining heat. Groans were wrung from both shocked throats. She was hot and sleek and moulded to his flesh like a second, tight skin, and he paused every other heartbeat as he lowered her, knowing he had never, in all his lusty years of manhood, wanted or needed a woman with so vast a passion as he felt now.

One woman, he reflected savagely.
This
woman. Fill me, she had said; love me, banish the emptiness …

He groaned and bent his head to her shoulder, his body quaking with a fever he feared he would not be able to control. He was all too aware of the subtle, rippling contractions that pulled his flesh still deeper, and of her cries and whispers drenching him in a heat that was almost too much to bear. He shifted his hands to her waist, his fingers rigid with the force of his need. He clenched his teeth against the growing, spreading rings of pleasure that spiraled through him, but he feared it was no use. His arms circled her waist and he groaned aloud, the sound catching like a sob in his throat as he fought valiantly to weather the unholy torment. Servanne shuddered and writhed and he heard her gasped plea, acknowledging it with an even hoarser groan as he gave her hips their freedom to plunder his flesh with their own merciless ingenuity.

Servanne’s upper body arched back and her hands clawed into his shoulders. She moved blindly against the hard fullness of him, the rapture engulfing her in waves of heat so intense she continued to quake with shock and pleasure long after she had lost the ability to govern her actions. She had to rely upon Lucien’s hands to reclaim their authority, Lucien’s arms to bring her to a dazed, quivering halt against him.

Limp and drained, she collapsed into the welcoming comfort of his embrace. Stunned by the depths of her own passions, she panted lightly against the curve of his shoulder and was thankful for his solid presence supporting her. His skin was hot beneath her cheek, and, with the slow return of sensation to her body, she became aware of the pounding beat of his heart against hers, and the fiercely possessive way he held her.

She dared to look up and their eyes met. Incredulously, she felt the wolfish fur at his groin chafing her and the deep, moist pulsations of his flesh sliding, stroking between her thighs.

“I am still there,” he murmured tersely. “How, by God’s splendour, I shall never know, but I am still there.”

He bowed his dark head, his words sounding like oaths where he pressed them against her breasts. Servanne squeezed her eyes closed and a glistening, fat tear splashed onto the back of the hand she curled around his neck and shoulders. Beneath her fingers were the welts of raised scar tissue; beneath her lips the taste of salt, musk, and leather. Deep inside her was the aching heat she had so shamelessly longed for, and she half-laughed, half-cried at her own foolish innocence. He had wanted her as much as she had wanted him and she wept for the joy of it, the wildness of it, the passion that coursed through her veins like rivulets of fire.

Lucien’s hands raked up into her hair, scattering the remains of the neatly plaited braid. He dragged the heavy woolen cloak closer and lowered her swiftly onto the padded folds, his body driving into hers with a hungry violence, his mouth eagerly sharing her renewed cries of awe and wonderment.

21

Servanne opened her eyes slowly. She had been oblivious to her surroundings, oblivious to everything but the power and the passion of the man in whose arms she lay. The tiniest shiver of fear chased along her spine when she recognized nothing familiar in the surrounding gloom. Could it all have been a dream again?

No. No dream had ever felt like this. No dream had cradled her body with such contented bliss. No dream had ever provided a shoulder of steely muscle for a pillow, or arms of warm marble for a blanket, or a body of such magnificent textures and essences for a mattress. No dream had ever supported her head when she could not, nor had there been hands half so bold or loving to gently draw her mouth around to his that they might savour the last ebbing shudders of spent ecstasy together. Spent, yet not spent. Drained, yet full to bursting with his life-giving strength.

Moaning softly to express her disappointment as he released her lips, she kept her pale, lovely face level with his. Her hair was spread every which way over her shoulders, with fine, damp tendrils clinging in misty curls to her temples and throat. Strands of it were tangled into the dark mat of hair on his chest. Filaments were tossed over his shoulders and curled around his arms to all but encase them in a gossamer cocoon. And, feeling safe and protected within their golden cocoon, Servanne lowered her cheek and rested it against the hard plane of muscle that breasted his chest.

“I would stay here with you, bound together like this forever, my lord,” she whispered dreamily. “Let someone from some future time discover our bones melted together and envy us that we died of such pleasure.”

Lucien ran his hands down beneath the silky veil of her hair, but where he should have insisted they at least retrieve their clothes and restore some order to their appearance, he only held her selfishly tight to his loins.

“You are a poor influence on a man’s willpower, madam.”

Servanne kept her smile hidden. “You are no salvation yourself, my lord wolf’s head.”

“Still, you have been gone far too long from your chambers,” he said gently. “Someone may discover the absence and sound an alarm. Come,” he said, kissing her as he lifted her off his thighs, “I will render what clumsy assistance I can to help bring order back to your appearance.”

Servanne stood, her long legs as weak and wobbly as those of a newborn doe. Lucien, still on his knees, reached out a hand to steady her, and try as he might, he could not stop himself from drawing her slowly toward him, his sigh almost one of impotent frustration as he laid his cheek against her breast. His arms encircled her waist and for a moment the pain and uncertainty was so stark on his face, it caused a fresh surge of tears to catch in her throat. He was always so sure of himself, so arrogant, so proud and seemingly invincible; the shock of seeing his sudden vulnerability, of knowing she was the cause of it, made Servanne bury her hands in his hair and bow her lips to the chestnut waves.

“I am no longer afraid, Lucien,” she whispered. “You have come to win justice and I know now you cannot fail. You will not fail. I asked you to share your strength with me to give me courage, and you have. Ask me for my heart, my love, my life, and I will gladly give them in return; now and forever.”

The Wolf’s grip remained steadfast a moment longer, then slowly eased. “Forever is a very long time, my lady, and I am no ordinary man, remember? I have cast my lot with demons and dwarfish fiends. This”—he pressed a kiss into the softness of her belly—“is pure devilry. You should therefore fear committing your soul into my keeping.”

“I fear nothing in your arms, my lord. As to my soul, it has not been mine to give these many days now. It was taken in ambush on a greenwood road and no amount of ransom, however dear, will return it to me. I know that now.”

The Wolf rose off his knees, his eyes burning with a renewed glow which she had no difficulty in interpreting. She parted her lips for his kiss—a tender mingling of breaths and tastes and promises. Their tongues spoke in a language of their own, invoking emotions so powerful, so potent, it was with some surprise she felt him hold her gently away.

“There must be no more delays,” he said firmly. “The dangers are inconceivable, the risks untenable. In this, you must obey me, Servanne.”

“Where should I find the strength to obey? Indeed, where shall I find the strength to walk?”

Lucien cupped her chin in his hand. “You shall find it and you shall use it to run, not walk back to the safety of your chambers. There”—he paused long enough to fetch up her gown and straighten it hem from collar—“you shall remain with the door closed and bolted until either Friar or myself come for you.”

“But … the tournament!”

“Plead illness. Plead injury. Plead whatever it takes to win permission for you to remain behind.”

“He will never allow it. Little as I know him, and little as he cares whither I come or go, I know he will want me present in the bower, both to witness his triumph in the lists, and to be on display as his newest possession.”

Lucien had lifted her arms, intending to settle the gown over her head, but at her words, he paused.

“A delay then. Beg only a delay and promise attendance to ease his suspicions. He will be eager to leave early for the common and will not have the patience to wait while you change a soiled gown, or retrieve some forgotten bauble from your chamber. Once he leaves, you can stretch the delay into an absence.”

“You want me so badly out of the way?”

“I want you safe, well out of harm’s way.”

“Once before you sent me away when I would willingly have stayed,” she said softly.

The Wolf took her hands in his and bent his lips to her cool fingers. “I have blamed myself, cursed myself a hundred times for ever having laid a hand on you. I should have seen the danger and stayed away at any cost, but you were already in my blood and it was too late.”

“Why did you send me away? You must have known long before I did, that a word, or a gesture, and I would have—”

He laid a finger across her lips. “You would have stayed with me in the forest? Servanne—I had a score of men at Thornfeld, another eighty or so camped some miles along the Lincoln road. Our task was to get inside Bloodmoor Keep and rescue the Princess Eleanor. You were—”

“A pawn?” she asked, her voice betraying no rancour or bitterness, which only made Lucien’s oath all the more self-deprecating as he covered her lips with his own.

“It is a shame I will bear to my grave to have to say we needed the ruse of the wedding to get inside the castle. Without you, there would have been no wedding.”

“Surely you could still have ransomed the princess from Prince John?”

“On neutral ground, outside the castle walls, no doubt we could. But then—”

“M’sieur La Seyne Sur Mer would not have been able to challenge the Baron de Gournay to a joust, and Lucien Wardieu would not have been able to fight for his honour and birthright, and there would not have been bowers full of witnesses to bear out your claim.”

The Wolf sighed and shook his head in resignation. “I told you once before you were too clever for your own good. Perhaps I
should
have left you in the forest.”

“Perhaps I could help …?”

“Do not,” he said harshly, his voice changing from velvet to steel in the blink of an eye, “do not even think to interfere or trifle with forces you do not understand. Etienne is a madman—mad with greed and avarice and power. He would not hesitate to swat you like a fly if he thought for one moment you were a threat to him. Promise me … swear to me here and now you will do nothing—nothing at all to draw attention to yourself!”

“But how can you ask me to stay away from the tourney when it is my life as much as yours being decided on the field!”

“How can you expect me to concentrate on doing what I must do if every time I look up, I see you seated there between Prince John and Nicolaa de la Haye?”

Servanne had not thought of that. But she did not accept defeat well either, and gave frowning proof of it as Lucien pulled the gown over her head and began straightening the rumpled folds. She continued frowning, and searching so hard for a reasonable alternative, he could not resist a smile.

“Maledictions, madam, I sorely trust each and every decision to be made in the future will not be met with such lengthy catechism. It leads me to believe you have been spoiled too long, and grown too accustomed to having your own way.”

“Whereas you, sirrah, have been left in the wild too long and show a marked lack of subtlety and compassion.”

“I warn you now, I’ll not take well to any attempts to tame me.”

“Nor will I,” she said, her eyes sparkling with the challenge.

Lucien caught his breath sharply, thinking how utterly beautiful she was at that instant. The pale gold of her hair was like liquid silk against his fingers, her skin like warm satin. Her eyes, luminous and bottomless were as deep and evocative as the waters of the Silent Pool, and he remembered his pledge to take her back to the magical grotto and pleasure her until the forest rang out with their ecstasy.

“Promise me, Servanne,” he demanded softly. “Promise me you will stay out of harm’s way.”

Servanne’s eyes grew hooded and a shiver tautened the flesh across her breasts as she felt his hands stroking up her thighs, raising the hem of her gown as they did so.

“I will do as you ask,” she whispered. “I promise.”

The muscles across his shoulders rippled and gleamed in the flickering light as he lowered her onto their bedding of discarded clothing again.

“Your word is your honour,” he murmured, “and I do not question it, but …”

   Servanne’s body ached wonderfully. Her limbs were shaky, but did not falter once on the misty route back to the main keep. Lucien’s arm around her waist for most of the journey was more than enough support, and when he reluctantly agreed with Alaric that he dared go no farther, the thrumming, thrilling aftereffects of their lovemaking were enough to see her through the final gates and into the pentice leading up to the second-storey towers.

It was there, when Friar left her at the bottom of the steep, spiraling staircase she had yet to climb, her exhaustion and weariness overtook her. Dragging under the weight of the woolen cloak, she mounted the stone steps to her private chambers one by one, slowing as she climbed higher and higher, her breath rasping and her lungs fighting for air as she reached the top of the darkened spire. She paused on the landing to gather her strength, and was so glad just to have conquered the last obstacle, she did not notice anything amiss as she passed through the outer chamber.

Not until she was halfway across the floor of the huge wardrobe, did she realize the light spilling from the open door to the solar was touching upon tunics and jerkins, hauberks of chain mail, capes and mantles of sky-blue wool … Not until the masculine scents of leather and wood musk assailed her senses did she realize she had mistakenly entered the Dragon’s private keep, the tower adjacent to her own.

A muffled sound from the inner chamber tore her horrified gaze from the assortment of vestments and weaponry, and fixed it upon the square of bright light shining out of the solar. She dared not move, dared not even back away or retrace her footsteps out to the landing lest a scratch of cloth or a misplaced footstep alert someone to her presence.

What could she do? She could not remain where she was. She could not go forward, nor back; she could not hide or conceal herself until morning even if she had the nerve or the stupidity to do so.

Where were his squires, Rolf and Eduard? Were they inside the main chamber preparing their master for bed? Would they emerge at any moment to find her standing there, frozen into a statue by her fear?

Envisioning what they would see when they found her caused Servanne’s heart to miss several more frantic beats. Her hair was a tangle, clotted with bits of straw and dirt. Her gown was wrinkled and caked with dirt from the long walk to and from the shroud-makers. Her mouth felt swollen and tender, her skin was chafed red from the abrasion of dark beard stubble. The warm, slippery residue of their passion had added to her pleasure on the walk back to the keep, but it would offer sure proof of her adultery if discovered now.

And for what other reason would the Dragon assume she had crept into his private chambers at this late hour of the night? She had not been entirely truthful to Lucien when she told him the Dragon paid her little heed. She had seen the growing interest in the pale blue eyes, had felt the increasing speculation in his burning gaze.

No, the Dragon would not hesitate to assume she was come to him for one reason and one reason only: the wedding was but a day away and not worth the frustration of waiting.

What to do? How to get away without being discovered?

The problem was solved for her by the sound of a woman’s voice, so close to the door Servanne was not given the opportunity to waste a thought before scrambling to one side of the wardrobe. Crushed up against the coarse folds of a hanging garment, she froze again, fully expecting to feel a rough pair of hands grasp her from behind and haul her into the brighter light.