The Protector (33 page)

He entered a hall filled with raucous noise and general good cheer. He felt little of that cheer himself. It must have shown, because a pall fell on the assembly when he was noticed.

His gaze went to Ascanio with a silent question. The priest glanced to the ceiling to tell him that Anna had gone to her chamber.

He paused at one of the tables and drank some ale. The calm that he showed was an illusion. During these last hours his thoughts had not been far from Anna and they had not been calm at all. Only blocking out the details of her danger had kept him even superficially composed.

He drank another cup of ale, as if to emphasize to himself that he was not dangerous. Then he gestured to Josce and went to the solar to have his armor removed.

He walked toward Anna's chamber and knew with each stride that he should not see her. It was the only sane thought in a head exploding with a fury still colored by the battle's bloodlust. He knew that he should not go, but he went anyway because there would be no peace tonight unless he did.

He threw open the chamber door harder than he planned, but then all of his actions came stronger when he was like this. It flew wide and crashed against the wall behind it.

Anna sat on the edge of the bed while Ruth combed out her hair. The servant's face paled.

“Leave us,” he said.

Ruth hesitated, and Anna placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder and nodded. As Ruth ran out, the child Marguerite suddenly appeared in her wake. Braver than her mother, she cast him an accusing stare. It was all he could do not to bring his hand down on her small back.

He closed the door and faced his wife. She had removed the cotte and hose, and had wrapped on her robe. He could tell that she had already washed. Her hair fell in riotous curls around her face. She gave him a long look that contained neither apology nor pleading.

She gestured vaguely, and the movement covered everything. His anger and her defiance, their past and their future, the violence that he barely kept in check. “If it will make you feel better, go ahead,” she said. “I will not hold it against you. I cannot even blame you.”

Anything else, anything at all, would have pushed him into darkness. But her quiet, velvet voice worked like a balm, and his fury retreated like the ebb of a violent wave.

“I did turn the horses, Morvan.”

“You almost died.”

“As did you.”

“That is different.”

“Not to me. I love you, and I see no difference.”

It was the first time she had said it. The last of the anger soaked away into the sands of his soul.

She still sat on the bed. The sensual light of hearth and candles played off her hair and flickered over the pale skin of her leg, visible where the robe had parted. The wave of fury had gone, but the tide of his blood still flowed high and other waves replaced it, just as violent, just as driven by the emotions of battle. And with them came images of her, erotic visions remembered and fantasized, and a hunger that he knew could be just as cold as the anger had been.

He had more experience at controlling this madness. He knew how to deal with it. “We will talk tomorrow,” he said, opening the door.

“Please do not go.”

His arm stopped, the door partly open. He glanced to where she had risen to her feet. The robe, loosely tied, threatened to fall open. He remembered the first time he had seen her in it, tall and brave, sword in hand, wild and free. Magnificent.

“It is best if I do, Anna.”

She walked over to him. The vision of her legs kicking through the slit of her robe entranced him. Breathtaking. He should leave now.

She stopped an arm's span away and looked into his eyes. What he saw in her face was unmistakable. He held on to his sanity with effort. She placed a hand on his chest. “I want you to stay. Do not turn from me because of this.”

He took her hand and kissed it. Even this small touch of her devastated him. “I don't leave because I'm angry with you, but because I am not fit for your company tonight. I am in no mood for courtly seductions.”

She considered what he said.

“Neither am I. Stay.”

His resolve began to crumble. But he had been very careful with her in their brief marriage and she was, in the end, still very ignorant.

“Nay. It is different after battle. I am different.” He released her hand. “I will go.”

She strode to the fire, angry and hurt. He was sorry for that, but he would take care of it later.

“Fine. Leave me to pace the floor like a good wife.”

“Anna—”

“On second thought, send me a man. One of the grooms. Or maybe Sir Walter.”

Her words cut like a hot knife into his head.

So. No longer ignorant and oblivious.

He moved in a dark, unseeing, furious blur, and found himself beside her, his left hand twisted in her hair and his right holding her face in a tight grip.

“Do not
ever
taunt me thus.”

She met his eyes with her level, bold gaze. If he was hurting her she did not show it. “What would you have me do then, Morvan? Ride a horse? I too have been in a battle.”

He studied her face in amazement. Aye, she felt what he felt. He could smell it on her. Could smell the remains of the exaltation and glory that only came when you defied violent death. Could smell the forbidden fear that surfaced when the danger ended. Mixed with them, covering them all, was the other scent that spoke of her hunger to feel alive. Her need intoxicated him, and he felt his control washing away.

“You do not know what you are talking about.”

“I hope that I'm talking about a few hours.” She laughed a little. “Whatever that means.”

Her humor and love threw an unaccustomed light onto his dark passions. He suddenly knew that he would not leave. He did not have to. This was Anna, and it would be different with her.

He thrust his hand between her thighs and felt the wetness already there. She rose against him with a groan and her small teeth sank into his neck. The thundering desire claimed him with an immediate need. He began lowering them both to the fur rug, pulling off her robe as they went, turning her body.

“You must stop me when you want.” It was a warning he had always given those nameless women after battles and tournaments and fights. But this was Anna, he
dimly reminded himself through the engulfing fire. He himself would know when she was done.

“You did not seem surprised by that,” he said.

She lay facing the hearth, his body still molded and joined behind her as it had been when they fell following his release.

Nay, not surprised. She had known what he was going to do even as he pulled her to the rug in their ferocious need. No preliminaries and no need for them, and she found her own release for the first time as his hard thrusts had salved this deep restlessness that she felt.

She glanced back at him. He was still dressed. No time for that either. “I am not completely ignorant, Morvan.”

He stroked her arm. “Still, some women do not like it. They feel too used.”

“Do not worry so much about me. I never feel used by you.”

His arms circled her, and he buried his face in her hair and neck. She felt him swelling, and an exciting expectation thrilled through her.

“Again, then.” He reached down and raised her knee to her chest. “After we will call for a bath and wash the battle off of us.”

It was very late when they called for the bath. After the last bucket of hot water had been poured, Morvan pushed back the bed curtains behind which she hid and carried her over to the tub. He washed her himself with caressing hands that both soothed and excited. He slowly lathered her with sensuous caresses, his hands smoothing over her again and again, circling deliciously
around her breasts and down her thighs. She knelt while he rinsed her, and his tongue whisked at the rivulets of water streaming down her body. By the time he lifted her from the tub and began drying her, her whole body was trembling again as if she had not had him in weeks.

He kissed her as he wiped the water away, and his sparkling eyes followed the progress of his hands as his mouth pressed and bit at her flesh. Her body was crying for him before he finished, and then she did for him as he had done for her, washing and drying him, floating the whole time in a tingling stupor of anticipation. When she went to her knees to wipe the water from his legs, her kisses found all of him. His hand touched her head and held her there, and he exhaled a response of ragged breath. It was the first time in all of their love-making that he had ever made a sound.

He lifted her up into his arms and carried her to the bed. She wanted him desperately, painfully, and as he laid her down she tried to pull him to her, but he restrained her with an arm over her stomach and kissed down her length. He pushed her legs apart and then, first with his hand and then with his mouth, caressed and probed, sending arching white lights of excitement through her.

Her release came violently. It crashed through her, almost tearing her apart. He held her hips firmly and kept his mouth to her, extending the incredible pleasure into a series of higher peaks.

He moved up, bringing her legs with him. Lifting them over his shoulders, he rose on extended arms and entered her with hard thrusts, slowly at first and then more fiercely, until finally his strength threatened to move her whole body before him. She closed her eyes to savor the power, and her own passion rose again to meet
his and tense toward that deeper, different release that she had learned about this night.

In her delirium, her body thrashed out of control. She grasped at him frantically, screaming into the timeless, airless oblivion where he had taken her. If not for the tremendous force of his body claiming her, she would have lost awareness of reality completely.

They made love all night. Over and over, during fierce hours of long joinings and brief separations, they both buried the emotions born in the battle. She never stopped him, no matter what he did. There was no real submission in her obedience, only new pleasures and satisfactions that soothed primitive parts of her soul.

Finally, as the first light of dawn replaced that of the guttering candles, they lay side by side, bodies entwined.

“Do you sleep?” she whispered.

“If you will finally permit it.”

“Oh.”

He laughed and shook his head. “Hell, woman, you are insatiable. I recall Ascanio once telling me that you would match me in this as all else. Prophetic, although this isn't quite what he had in mind.”

“Go to sleep. Dawn breaks. I could go ride a horse now.”

He laughed again, and pulled her up and held her shoulders above him. Her breasts grazed his chest, tantalizing her. “Seduce me,” he said. “I can probably show some patience now. And then you can ride me instead of a horse.”

A
NNA SAT ON A STOOL BY
the solar hearth, smoothing Morvan's favorite red pourpoint over her lap. While their night of passion had subdued their battle, she had hardly given up the struggle. Eventually some form of compromise would be his only choice.

She held up the pourpoint and eyed it critically. He had worn this the day that he sealed their bargain at David's house. The color brought attention to his eyes, and he looked magnificent in it. She remembered the effect well, and the disadvantage his appearance had put her in that morning. Aye, this garment had a lot to answer for.

Morvan looked up from the table, where he was working with a quill. “What are you doing?”

“Woman's work.” She flattened the sleeve on her lap
and tilted her head back to imagine what she would do to it. “Gold, don't you think?”

“Gold?”

“Thread. Very visible and rich. Good contrast.”

“I have always liked it as it is.”

“Your garments are much too plain for a lord. What will people think if I let you go about thus? Gold it will be.”

“I find that I prefer plain garments. I was impressed by David's. The total lack of adornment is very appealing and distinctive.”

“David is a merchant.”

“Still, I would keep a few items thus. Like that pour-point.”

“Are you implying that you do not want me to care for your things? That you do not trust my womanly skills?”

He laughed. “I am saying that I would prefer that you didn't ruin my favorite garments, Anna. Have a little mercy.”

He came over and lifted her up, drawing her to his chair and settling her on his lap. He never seemed to notice that she was really too big to sit like that. “How did you manage to become the worst needlewoman in Brittany?”

“I avoided it whenever possible. One just sits for hours counting threads, plying a needle. It was enough to drive me mad. So I made it a point to never do it well. Even at the abbey they soon found other work for me.”

“What kind of work?”

“Not ladies' work, I'm afraid. I tended the garden. I helped in the infirmary. Sometimes I even scrubbed floors.”

“You fought off brigands.”

The mood suddenly changed. The air in the room seemed to thin.

“That too, once.”

His smile was gone and a thoughtful expression had taken its place. A strange stillness came from him.