The Holding - Book 1 in The Medieval Knights Series (22 page)

He debated lying to her, but he could not, especially with his words of being one so warm upon his lips.

"I have learned more of the history of Greneforde," he said delicately.

Waves of humiliation, worse than the night when he had taken his unvirgin bride, washed over her, and she struggled to be free of him. Before, she had almost taken comfort in his ignorance. He would know she was not virginal, but he would not be privy to the wrenching details that preyed upon her thoughts whenever she relaxed her mental vigilance. Her degradation, in its privacy, was manageable; this knowledge of his was brutal. In some strange manner, it raped her spirit as Lambert had raped her body. William would not release her. He held her firmly upon his lap, his arms closed around her, until she gave up her struggle and sat, resolved to bolt at the first opportunity. Sensing this, William did not relax his hold. No words were spoken as they sat staring at the ever-constant, ever-shifting fire.

William had ceased his stroking with her struggle, and now he fingered a lock of her shining hair. She did not fight him. She was still beneath his hand. It was a small victory, but it cheered him.

"God and king have given you to me, Cathryn," William said with quiet force. "I accept the gift, and gladly."

She did not believe him.

He knew well that she did not.

"You are beautiful," William said feelingly.

"Nay," she finally said. "I am..." The word
dirty
almost passed her lips.

"Guiltless," William finished.

And in spite of all the heavy weight of the moment, or perhaps because of it, he caused her to see humor when she had so recently believed she never would again.

"Can anyone be both beautiful and guiltless?" Cathryn said with a hesitant smile.

"There is only one, and you are she," he answered with tender solemnity, and kissed the tip of her nose.

He was an odd man, this le Brouillard, and she could not help smiling even as she shook her head. William took no offense but merely tucked her head beneath his chin while he played with the length of her hair. And stealing over her with all the natural silence of clouds in a summer sky was a feeling of comfort and safety. And something she had never thought to experience again: the sense of being loved.

What William felt was mounting arousal.

She was light upon his lap, and the soft weight of her pressed delightfully against him. The firm mounds of her derriere were deliciously full, and he could feel his manhood rising to nestle between them. His hand slid from her hip in a smooth glide to her breast, his fingers seeking her dormant nipple.

Cathryn stiffened immediately.

"You are my wife," he said into her hair. "I desire a proper wedding night."

The warmth she had felt blossoming within, the sense of peace, retreated from the chill that was fast covering her.

"Can we not just stay as we are?" she tried, speaking from her heart. "It is... nice."

His other hand swept up to capture her breast, and her nipples rose in mutiny to her will, eagerly giving themselves into his care.

"I desire more than 'nice.' I desire you, Cathryn."

Her back curled away from his touch, even as her nipples reached for him.

"William, please," she pleaded.

"Do not beg me not to take you; 'twould hurt my pride," he teased, answering the silent call of her distended nipples and rolling them between his thumb and forefinger. "Have you not heard of the Frankish man's expertise in matters of love? We are renowned for it."

"Nay—" she smiled in spite of herself—"I have heard only of their penchant for warfare."

"Night must fall in due course every day," he explained with a straight face, "and a man must needs keep busy."

He had his first taste of victory; Cathryn was accepting his touch and was in the first stages of arousal, though he doubted that she knew it. He stroked her hair as she leaned gently into his hand. And sometimes his hand went just a bit astray and he touched her abdomen or her inner thigh or the roundness of her breast. Her nipples, beneath their linen covering, grew tighter and darker in hue. He urged himself not to hurry.

She followed his hand now with her body, anticipating the location of his next touch and arching to meet it. Her dark eyes still stared into the fire, but they were no longer eyes of suspicion and hostility.

He touched her knee in a light caress that dragged upward, taking the linen with it. She did not protest. The cool air felt good against her heated skin, but there was a prickling uneasiness that was nudging aside the pleasant languor she was feeling. She ought not to feel this way. She should not enjoy his touch, husband though he was. Her control, so familiar a friend, was slipping away from her and she must call it back. But... but... she did not want this to end.

When his fingers brushed against the apex of her thighs, she sighed and opened to him, her eyes closed against the light of the blaze. With one hand he rolled a nipple with gentle roughness, and with the other he traced the portal that would soon admit him. And she did not turn from him, did not fight him; she submitted to each and every touch, murmuring softly in her throat for yet more.

William's fingers were slick with the milk of her readiness. The shift was bunched up under her arms, revealing all of her to his eyes and his touch. His hand upon her breast became as light as mist, and she moaned with a whisper on an expelled breath and arched her back to find him. He came down upon the other breast and she sighed her satisfaction, a shiver of pleasure shaking her. He widened the angle of his thighs, and her thighs, resting atop, followed his unresistingly. She was as open to him as an unmanned tower gate. He circled her tiny erection with his fingertip and she gasped. When he flicked it with all the swiftness of a falcon taking flight, her hands clasped his thighs in a grip to do a warrior proud.

And his own warrior throbbed and burned, eager to bury itself in wetter warmth than the globes of her derriere offered.

Lifting her, William carried her to the bed and laid her upon it. Her dark eyes opened at the movement, looking with dull confusion at her change of position, but not closing her legs against his weight.

"You are near to purring, Cat," William said in a seductive growl as he entered her wetness.

Cathryn went stone cold.

His orgasm came quickly, but it was several moments before he realized that he was alone in his pleasure. After a few more strokes, he stopped, resting between her splayed thighs.

"We but need practice," he offered.

"I have 'practiced' aplenty."

For the second time in this bed, William felt icy rage and profound hurt descend upon him. This time he controlled it. He pulled out of her and she immediately turned away from him.

"But not with me," he said softly.

"Are you truly so different?" she asked, curled into a ball on her side.

"Am I truly not?"

That gave her pause, for had she not noted repeatedly that he was an oddity in her experience?

"You are different," she finally relented.

"Different how?"

This required more thought and greater effort. How to put into words what it was that was so different about William le Brouillard? She did not think his passion for the bath was what he wanted to hear at the moment. His humor? That was a goodly part of it. He caused her to smile at the most unexpected moments and was not so proud that he would not be the source of the joke. But what lay beneath all was his gentleness, displayed so clearly on their bridal bed, and even now, when she had hurt his pride with spitefully spoken words, William treated her with kindness.

"You are gentle," she finally said, "and have a care for me."

"I am your husband, Cathryn, and God has said that I must love you as I love myself. This I do."

Cathryn turned to face him, only his eyes visible in the darkness.

"Is it that simple?"

"I have vowed it at our wedding ceremony," he answered. "I do not give my word lightly."

"Nor do I," she said, bristling.

"I am relieved to hear it," William answered, his teeth shining white as he smiled.

And again, she could not help but smile with him.

"I have sworn to be your wife, William le Brouillard, and I shall be," she affirmed, the resolve unmistakable in her voice.

William considered her for a moment and then asked, "In all ways?"

To her credit, she hesitated for less than a moment before answering his challenge.

"In all ways."

"Without hesitation?"

"Yea."

"With an eager will?" he added, a humorous lilt to his voice.

"You do ask much, le Brouillard," Cathryn retorted.

"No more than I ask of myself," he explained, his voice once again serious, "for are you not 'bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh'?"

"From whence comes that metaphor?"

"'Tis no metaphor, but fact, Cathryn. I but quote Adam when he first beheld his Eve."

"She who was the downfall of all mankind, according to our priest," Cathryn said wryly.

"She who was created from and for Adam by God's own hand," William rejoined. "Should we believe that God was off His stride when He did fashion her?"

"'Tis blasphemy you speak!" she said, shocked, and also amused. It was sinful the way he made her smile over matters of eternal seriousness.

"Nay," he argued. "Eve should not be flayed for Adam's folly."

"What folly was his?" she asked when her curiosity overtook her.

"He listened overmuch to his wife's counsel," William answered with lazy seriousness.

Laughter, so long repressed, so long missed, burst from within her to rock the walls of William's chamber. Cathryn could scarce remember the last time she had laughed even the smallest titter. That her husband could entice the kind of breathless hilarity that shook her now almost shocked her. And over matters spiritual!

William had once more worked his silent magic. Cathryn had all but forgotten that they lay near to nakedness in the same bed. She was relaxed. There were no walls between them, at least for the present.

Touching her cheek when her laughter had finished, William nestled her against his warmth, his hand resting upon the curve of her waist.

"Sleep, wife," he gently commanded.

And to her surprise, she did.

Chapter 11

Dawn came quietly, scarce able to break through the rain-filled clouds. In infinitesimal increments, the light increased in William's chamber. With each passing moment, Cathryn's face was more clearly revealed to William's searching gaze.

She faced him, her hand beneath her cheek, her hair tangled around her throat. Even in the darkness, her glorious hair glowed gold and silver like an angel's nimbus. A little more light and he could see the delicacy of her upturned nose and the well-defined rim of her jaw. And then he watched as the scar upon her brow cast its own small shadow upon her silken skin: the testimony of her rape.

She was asleep and very near him; he could indulge his fury at Lambert of Brent but little. Cathryn would never know the fury of his rage for any cause. He would not release the blinding, roaring anger that pounded at his temples at the thought of what that man had wrought upon his wife.

She was a broken vessel—not in body, as he had first believed, but in spirit—and the breaking was the worse for that. What she had been before, he would never know, not unless he could heal the scars that maimed her, and that he was determined to do. Cathryn was his second chance; what he had failed to do for his sister, Margret, he would do for her. God was most merciful in giving second chances. If he could heal the scars upon his wife— and he vowed very quietly before God that he would—mayhap the pain and guilt that had ridden him so hard since Margret's death would ease. Mayhap... if God was merciful.

Cathryn did not trust him. She had erected wall upon wall against him, against all, and though he had made ground last night, proving she was not impregnable, he still had far to go in his campaign to have her vulnerable before him. For such was the way between a man and his wife. There must be no barriers between those who were one, else they were not one at all and their marriage was a travesty of God's law.