Almost of their own accord, Rowan’s arms hefted his sword aloft and prepared to bring it down. For a decade since Jacquetta’s death he had lived in emotional purgatory. He had taken a chance on Cecily Tyrell to save him.
Instead, she had thrust him into hell.
He read the doubt in her eyes. Did she truly believe he would harm a hair on her head?
With burning clarity, he recalled the wrath he had spewed on her in their bridal bed. A sword strike would be quick and merciful by comparison. He’d given her no reason in the world to trust him. Yet she had—to a point.
He had shattered even that.
Calling forth every ounce of furious strength within him, Rowan plunged his sword to earth, burying it halfway to the hilt in the soft turf of the meadow. Recoiling from Con’s and Cecily’s dazed faces, he lurched toward the privacy of the trees.
His chest throbbed as though he had thrust the weapon into it instead of the ground. He must go to earth, like a boar or bear that had taken its death wound. Perish in peace and seclusion, without the final indignity of hounds worrying him or scavengers eyeing him hungrily.
As he lumbered deeper into the copse, the toe of his boot caught on an exposed tree root. He hurtled forward, landing face first in the brook. Though the water was shallow, it numbed him invitingly, luring him to abandon any thought of struggle.
Then a hand closed around the back of his mail birnie and wrenched him clear of the water.
Cecily shook him. “If you think I mean to let you off this easily, DeCourtenay, you are gravely mistaken.”
She would not be denied—that much was evident. Wearily, Rowan dragged himself away from the brook and collapsed back against a broad tree trunk.
“Do you…” he gasped for air “…take pleasure in spiting me and holding me up to ridicule?” He swiped a sodden forelock back out of his eyes.
To his amazement, she wilted to the ground beside him, like a combatant too spent to lift herself for a final blow. Once again, her spirit amazed him. What other woman would pursue a man to confront him, after he had appeared to raise his sword against her?
“What choice did you leave me?” Cecily buried her head in her up-tucked knees. “You promised me the freedom to act as I wish. Or was that only a ruse to put me in a pliant humor for bedding? The moment you had a husband’s power over me, you used it to thwart me again. Ever since I was a child, Brantham has been everything to me. I am going home, will you or nill you.”
How could she have misinterpreted his intentions so grossly? It had been easier to make himself understood by the Turks and Saracens than by his own wife. Yet he had once thought she could read his heart more clearly than anyone else.
Before he could form the words to defend himself, she added in a choked whisper, “If you don’t care for me, why do you need to control me?”
The autumn breeze rippled over Rowan’s damp clothes, chilling him to the bone. Cecily’s words chilled him more.
“Not care?” He caught her by the shoulders and looked hard into her eyes. “How can you say so, after the way I groveled at your chamber door before dawn? Did you stop your ears and your heart against me so ruthlessly that you could not spare me one word of pardon?”
Her whole face softened then, and a single keening sob broke from her lips. What could it mean?
Rowan pressed on. Having begun, he could no more stop himself than a diver could arrest his fall in midplunge. “Say you cannot, nor never did care for me. But do not pretend to believe I care naught for you.”
“You came back?” The whispered question hung between them, as light with hope and wonder as a water bubble. And just as fragile.
Fearing it might shatter beneath the weight of his words, Rowan replied with a mute nod.
She bent close, pressing her forehead to his. “I did not harden my heart to you. After you stormed off, I dressed in some of your clothes. Then I called a maid servant to stay in your chamber and keep the door barred until the army had ridden out.”
With ruthless force, Rowan quashed an answering bubble of hope that swelled inside him. “It doesn’t matter. Perhaps it is better we leave this marriage unconsummated—all the easier to break when need be. We are like chalk and cheese, you and I. I sometimes wonder if we speak the same language.”
His heart rebelled at the notion of parting from her, but his will prevailed. Barely.
He did care. He had come back. If only she had not been in such a hurry to get her own way. She might have heard him and welcomed him back into her bed—where they might still have lingered at this very moment.
The notion of it, together with Rowan’s closeness and her own tightly strung emotions, set Cecily light-headed with renewed desire for him. She had pushed him away once, without understanding how or why. When he had lifted his sword, she had feared him. Despite all her protests of trust.
Now it was up to her to draw him close again.
“We are not opposites, DeCourtenay.” She reached out to him, sliding the backs of her fingers along his bearded cheek in a slow, inviting caress. “It is true, we are different. But our differences compliment one another. You are prudent where I am reckless. I am merry where you are solemn. In those respects that count most, we are alike. We are strong….”
A ghost of a smile hovered on his lips. “And clever.”
“Aye.” She did not try to disguise the eagerness in her voice. “And courageous. If we put all our strength, cleverness and courage to work, can we not find our way to each other in spite of our differences?”
The shadows of early evening had deepened in the copse. From a distance, Cecily heard the sounds of Rowan’s men making camp. Smelled the savory aroma of mutton pottage.
In Rowan’s eyes, she read his longing. And his fear. When he remained silent for longer than she could bear, Cecily answered her own question.
“I believe we can do it, Rowan, but not while mistrust and secrets fester between us. Will you please tell me—did your first wife play you false?”
His eyelids slid shut, perhaps to keep his eyes from betraying more than they had already. Or had exhaustion claimed him?
Cecily had begun to suspect the latter when he vouched the barest nod of his head. She clamped her lips to check the rush of questions she hankered to ask him. Somehow, she knew he must tell her in his own time, in his own way. Or not at all.
At last he spoke, each quiet, reluctant word delved from the depths of his pain. “On our wedding night, I found out she was no maid.”
Cecily winced. What potent demons had she invoked with her innocent-sounding words in their bridal bed? Had Jacquetta also avowed her virginity, only to be proven false? Could she blame Rowan for holding her too close, guarding her too jealously—when she pricked his deepest anguish by consorting in so careless a fashion with every man in his castle?
“Well, I am a maid. And so I will stay until you claim me. No man has ever affected me as you do, Rowan. None, save you, has ever tempted me to mate or marry. The rest—they could be a pack of playful hounds for all I care. I enjoy their boisterous company. Nothing more. I warmed to Con ap Ifan because he reminds me of my brothers, and because he knows you so much better than I can ever hope to.”
Rowan opened his eyes again. They were less troubled than before. But no less sad. “I believe you, lass.” He heaved a great sigh. “In truth, it was never you I doubted—but myself.” He shook his head. “Never in my life have I come first in the affections of any man or woman. I believed I did with Jacquetta, only to find out otherwise.”
Cecily thought of her own hard, futile fight to come first in her father’s affections. The differences between her and Rowan were superficial. Their common ground ran deep.
“You are first in my heart.” She stifled thoughts of Brantham. It was a place and a collection of people she loved. Rowan had become the most important single person to her. “Whether you want to be or not.”
Her declaration demanded more than mere words. Awkward from lack of experience, but frankly ardent, she pressed her lips to his, silently pleading for a reply.
It came.
A flicker at first. The slightest yielding of his firm, wide mouth. A catch in his breath.
His arms raised. Hesitated.
Then pulled her toward him convulsively as his lips parted to devour her.
The power of his embrace and the hot potency of his kiss drove the breath from Cecily’s body. She melted against him, surrendering to the sweet fire that rippled through her flesh.
She did not feel entrapped, as she had in the close confines of their bridal bed, or pressed against the tower wall in Ravensridge. Instead, Rowan’s fervor liberated something wild and natural within her.
The rustle of a smoky autumn breeze through the vividly colored leaves and the elemental melody of flowing water vibrated within her. The scent of the woodland, ripe and fertile, mingled with the musk of a male creature roused to a pitch of desire. Rowan’s kisses tasted like mulled autumn cider, hot, rich and intoxicating.
Wresting her lips, unwillingly, from his, she gasped, “Is it well we never consummated our union?”
Nostrils flared like a stallion at full gallop, Rowan stilled for a moment. He answered her brash quip with pensive earnest. “No. That was badly done and I was wrong to say otherwise.”
Sensing there was more to come, she held his gaze and waited—wanting him with a fierce craving that made all her previous desire seem like girlish flirtation.
Just when she felt she could stand it no more and must hurl herself upon him or beg him to take her, Rowan found his voice again. “Is it too late to mend what I have marred?”
All around them, nature lay poised between ripeness and decay. Completing the age-old cycle of budding, blossoming, bearing fruit and abating. Nothing in life was as certain as its transience. Seasoned fruit, unplucked, only withered on the vine.
Slowly she shook her head. “Not too late at all. We must seize our time.”
The radiant expression that lit his face surpassed any smile Cecily had witnessed. It was as though the setting sun had changed its mind and risen again, warmer and more brilliant than ever.
Rowan glanced around. “Not here, greatly as it tempts me.” He held out his hand to her. “Let us see if my tent has been pitched. It will not afford us the amenities of my chamber at Ravensridge, but it is the best I can do for a bridal bower at short notice.”
Inebriated by this sudden, unforeseen accord between them, Cecily launched herself at Rowan, sending them both sprawling back onto a bed of moss.
“Just so you take me to wive.” She nuzzled his neck, trailing light nipping kisses from the base of his ear to his collarbone. “And make a good end to all the love lessons you began to teach me on our journey. I care not where.”
His straining breath and the tight pitch of his reply gave her a delicious sense of power. “Keep on like that and I serve you fair warning, dear heart. I may not be able to hold my lust in check long enough to reach my tent.”
Scrambling up, she helped Rowan to his feet. “You can be no more eager than I.”
It was true. His words, his touch, his kisses had lit a bonfire of yearning in her loins that only he could quench.
They made their way back toward the meadow where his army was encamped, pausing now and then to indulge their mutual desire with long deep kisses and questing hands. Stoking the blaze of passion between them to giddy heights.
Perhaps the cook had learned the identity of his unsatisfactory assistant. Or perhaps he had tired of beating the bushes for the “lad” and returned to the task of preparing supper for DeCourtenay’s men. A line had formed near the cauldron where the cook now dispensed ladlesful of pottage and the hard slabs of bread they called trenchers.
As the smell of mutton and leeks wafted on the early evening breeze, Cecily’s stomach rumbled piteously.
Rowan chuckled. “Shall we take nourishment first, to fortify ourselves?”
Some of the soldiers glanced up from their supper bowls as if surprised to see Cecily returned from the copse all in one piece.
Perching on her tiptoes, she whispered in Rowan’s ear, “Supper can wait. I have a sharper appetite that demands satisfaction.”
“Oddly enough, so have I.” A gust of free, hearty laughter shook Rowan to his toes. He seemed neither to mark nor care about the speculative looks his men exchanged.
He drew her toward his tent, pitched before a slight rise. To the man-at-arms who guarded it, he ordered, “Stand off a ways and see to it that we are not disturbed on any account.”
“As you bid, my lord.” The fellow strove to swallow a broad grin and failed miserably.
Cecily caught his eye. She sensed the proper response from her should be a modest blush and downcast gaze. Instead she grinned back and winked.
Turning to his tent, Rowan drew back the entry flap for Cecily to enter.
As she crossed the threshold, she discovered a surprisingly agreeable site for their bridal tryst. Though the tent covered only a few paces in length and width, it was tall enough for them both to stand comfortably. A covered iron brazier in one corner had taken the chill off the autumn air, its smoke laced with herbs to mask the musty scent of canvas. A tiny lamp hung from the ridgepole, shedding just enough soft, flickering light to preside over their connubial rites.
As Cecily’s eyes grew accustomed to the shadows, they fixed on the corner of the tent opposite the brazier, where a thick mattress of fleeces beckoned her. She turned on Rowan and kissed him hungrily, her tongue swiping a moist bond between his lips and hers.
With obvious reluctance, he pulled away from her. “Not a touch or kiss more until you have shed those clothes.” He chuckled. “At my cousin Joscelin’s court, I knew men who made use of pretty boys. The practice never appealed to me. I want to know I have a woman in my arms.”
“Will you help me disrobe?” Her throat tightened, just saying the words.
His answer surprised her. “No. I would rather watch you do it.”
The suggestion, delivered in a husky murmur, fueled the heat in Cecily’s blood like a flask of oil poured on an open flame.
As she sought to regain her composure, Rowan slipped past her, careful not to permit even a glancing brush of their bodies. He knelt before a low chest, very much like the one he’d given her as a wedding present. From it he removed a wine flagon and a goblet.
Unstopping the flagon, he poured out a generous measure of wine, the color of flawless rubies. “Perhaps this will fortify us sufficiently until we are ready to take food.”
Cecily vacillated between the need to steady herself with a drink and the certainty that Rowan’s attentions would stimulate her better than any libation of the vine.
He held out the goblet to her. One dark brow cocked over eyes sparkling with delicious wickedness. “Let me make you an exchange. Say, one drink for every garment you remove?”
With a sly smile and a nod, she accepted his offer. Pulling off one leather shoe, she held it out to him. “I believe you owe me a drink, my lord.”
Taking the shoe from her, he tossed it aside, then held the goblet to her lips. She barely managed a sip before he pulled it back again. When Cecily sputtered in protest, he took a drink himself, savoring the bouquet upon his tongue.
“You shall have a longer draft when you have earned it, lass. With something more engaging than a bare foot.”
“Scoundrel!” Purring the word, as though it were the choicest of endearments, she kicked off the second shoe and claimed her miserly reward.
Next came the hooded surcoat.
After grudging her a slightly longer drink, Rowan stood back to watch as Cecily lifted the tunic over her head and let it fall to the ground beside her. She gave a little wriggle, enjoying the sensation of the air on her naked breasts. Their tawny pink paps rose erect and expectant as if signaling to her lover’s hands.
Rowan answered their call. This time he offered Cecily the goblet, to claim as long or short a drink as she chose. But how could she think of wine…or light, or air, when he cupped each sweetly aching bosom in one of his palms, teasing the paps to greater and greater heights with tantalizing swipes of his thumbs?
A tremulous gasp broke from Cecily’s lips. “Take back the cup before I spill it.”
With a lingering farewell caress that promised more to come, Rowan lifted his hands from her breasts and reclaimed the goblet. A smile of deep satisfaction hovered on his lips and glowed in his eyes. He enjoyed rousing her—that was clear.
“But, dear heart, you have not collected your reward.” He held the rim to her lips as she imbibed. “And these deserve a rich reward.”
His hot gaze flicked over her breasts again with such palpable admiration, Cecily fancied she could feel its gossamer caress. What reward would ensue when she shed the breeches? The anticipation made her heart skip giddily.
Before she could wriggle out of them, Rowan dipped two fingers into the goblet and anointed one of her nipples with a drop of wine. Dipping his head, he suckled it off with deft strokes of his tongue. By the time he’d favored the other breast with a similar reward, Cecily was ready to melt into a whimpering puddle on the ground.
With fumbling fingers, she untied the breeches and let them fall around her ankles.
Slowly Rowan walked around her. She started as his hand came to rest in a featherlight touch on her backside.
“You have healed…beautifully.” He rested his bearded chin on her shoulder. “Sister Hulda’s ointment must have magical properties. Or perhaps the hand that applied it?”
His arms encircled her from behind, bringing the wine goblet to her lips for a final deep draft. Oh, the strange but heady sensation of her bare back and rump pressed against his chain mail!
A woman at her most open and vulnerable. A man at his strongest and most guarded. But who possessed the greater power?
As he held the cup with one hand, Rowan let the other slide lazily downward, running over her breast and belly like a delicious trickle of warm water. Coming to rest with gentle possession on the downy mound between her thighs. Cecily did not trust herself to swallow the wine in her mouth, for fear she might choke.
With a swift, searing kiss on her neck, Rowan drew back from her again. A drop of wine dribbled from the corner of Cecily’s slack mouth.
“I beg one boon more.”
It was everything she could do to swallow the wine and breathe. “Anything.”
“Let me unplait your hair?”
Too lost in the extremity of pleasure for words, she could only nod her acquiescence.
With fingers suddenly grown impatient, he untied the leather cord and loosed her hair to fan around her. Two strands he draped over her shoulders to veil her breasts. That done, he circled in front of her and sated his eyes.
A spark of her natural impudence rekindled. “They do say sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, my lord.”
He beamed, like a master doting on the genius of a favorite pupil. “You would have me doff my armor? Merry, what reward will you grant me for each piece I divest?”
Cecily met the roguish challenge in his eyes with an intrepid thrust of her chin. “For each garment you remove, husband, I will give you leave to name and claim your own reward.”
His nostrils flared and for an instant he looked in peril of loosing his poised control. “That is as tempting a bargain as ever I’ve been offered. A man would be a fool to turn it down.” He flashed a feral grin that made Cecily break out in gooseflesh. “And I am no fool.”
For the first boot, he demanded a kiss—long and luxurious as a pelt of fine fur, with no parts of their body touching save lips and tongues.
For the second boot, he begged leave to run a single finger over her body, from crown to toe. As the pad of his finger glided across her skin, it set her aquiver with desire.
Upon removing the coif that protected his neck and head, Rowan bid Cecily suckle each of his fingers in turn. When he doffed his birnie of chain mail, he exacted the right to suckle each of hers. After his leather gambeson came off, with some assistance from her, he asked leave to rub his bare chest lightly against her bosoms. When his thatch of silken chest hair grazed her exquisitely sensitive paps, Cecily squealed with sweet torment.
Last, he removed his quilted leather breeches. Cecily watched with greedy eyes as the action liberated his rampant desire.
“Your will, my lord?” Her lips would scarcely cooperate to form the words.
All the mocking, teasing merriment had fled his gaze. Now it smoldered with hunger too long held in check. His hushed, urgent reply seared the air. “I will have you on your back.” He pointed to the mattress of fleeces. “Spread open to welcome me.”
A flutter of panic rose in her throat as she contemplated his size and his power. But a heady intemperance pulsed in her veins, pleading for the release only he could give her.
With an inviting sway of her hips, and a provocative glance back over her shoulder at Rowan, she sauntered to the makeshift bed. She collapsed on her back, her hair fanned around her and her legs sprawled wide in total surrender.
Hovering over her, Rowan heaved the massive sigh of a starveling contemplating the choicest feast.
“I gave you wine,” he growled, nuzzling the responsive flesh of her inner thighs with his beard. “Now I will sample your native vintage.”
At the whisper of his breath and the barest flicker of his tongue, her whole world turned inside out. Roiling. Spinning. Pulsing. Boiling alive in a cauldron of pleasure.
Before she could regain her senses, Rowan mounted her and thrust home. A cry of pain rose in her throat, but died in the onslaught of delight.
Spread open to welcome me. His words resonated in her mind as she melded her body to his. With instinctive convulsions of her hips, she urged him to plunge from that pinnacle of ecstasy to which he had coaxed her.
Then his mouth clamped down on hers and his whole body clenched again and again, as though it could not contain the force of sensation that rampaged through it. In the end it held together. But barely so.
For a moment he swooned on top of her, then gathered himself for a valiant effort and rolled onto his side, taking Cecily with him. Spent and complete at last, they slept.
He had died. It was the only explanation.
Died and gone to paradise.
So it seemed to Rowan as he slowly woke in the early hours of the morning.
Cecily nestled in his arms as though God had created her expressly to fill them. Expressly to fill the yawning void in his heart. Last night it had seemed possible that he filled some aching hollow within her, too.
Now, while she slept within the circle of his embrace, a fierce fever of protectiveness raged through him. Cecily was too eager, too trusting, too forgiving. She needed someone strong and vigilant to shield her against…a man like him.
Recognizing his own unworthiness, he should have been the first to warn her away. Instead, he had succumbed to his own selfish desires and led her into temptation.
Unbidden memories from their night of love tantalized him. Was he not willing to ransom his soul for more of the same?
Perhaps.
A deep sigh shook him, and from the corner of his eye a single tear fell upon Cecily’s silken mane.
But he was not willing to ransom her soul.
Somehow he must find a way to save his reckless, mettlesome beauty from the consequences of her own forthright generosity.
Even if it cost him his heart.