A Knight's Vow (34 page)

“Why would I? I am a healer.” She was laughing, making a
joke, but Alyson grimaced as she said it. A shadow seemed to
pass over her and she trembled. Was this how the rest of the
evening and the night would be-this muddle of longing and
regret because she was not sure who would make the next move
between them? I have vowed to seduce him, she thought, defiantly raising her chin.

“And I am not your girl anymore,” she went on, unsure if
she was being pert or merely petulant.

Amazingly, Guillelm seemed to understand her tumbled
feelings, her lack of sureness of how she should act now. His
smile filtered to her through the smoke. “No, by God! You are
my woman now.”

He moved back to the open door, pointing to the darkening
vault of heaven. “Venus is rising. Can you see her?”

“I think so ” Alyson padded toward the fire and Guillelm. As
she drew near, he caught her gently round the waist and lifted
her closer.

“It is clearing. The skies will be full of stars tonight,” he said,
turning away to give her time to regain her breath and smooth
her gown. “Look-there is Andromeda, without her dragon”

He pointed as Alyson stood beside him, close enough to
smell the fresh water on his skin. He had washed himself at
the spring. Trying to distract herself from his disturbing presence, she followed his pointing arm as he named several stars.

“I know few stories or legends for these summer stars,” she
said softly, ashamed of her admission. Her parents had never
been able to share any tales with her, and when she had once
asked Gytha, her nurse had claimed she had forgotten. “They
are very beautiful,” she added.

Through the arching roof lintel and above the hissing fire,
far above the tops of the tallest tree or hill, the stars slowly
filled the sky, brighter than pearls. Some seemed almost bluewhite in their brilliance.

“I have always loved the night sky,” Guillelm said. “The
scents of an eastern garden at night, the call of owls. When I
was in Outremer I would lie awake listening to the little owls
hooting at each other.”

He and Alyson listened as two barn owls called again and
again, the sounds drifting slowly away on the still air.

“I used to listen for bats,” Alyson said, smiling at the
memory.

They remained silent together a moment longer, each
aware of the other.

Dropping another twig onto the fire, Guillelm’s hand found
both of hers and raised them gently. He cleared his throat, as
if about to admit a shameful thing. “As you know, I like to
cook, when I can. Shall I treat your shoulder with that salve
and then heat up our supper?”

Gratitude flowered again in Alyson. “Yes, please,” she answered, still partly astonished that she was alone with him
and that she moved him-as clearly she did.

Kneeling beside her on their springy, seductive, sweetsmelling bed of hay, Guillelm hoped that she did not realize
what effect she was having on him. Although it was a rainy
midsummer, he was still very hot, and not from his earlier
brisk walk to the spring. He was pleased that his clothes hid
the most obvious signs of his arousal. Smoothing a salve
made from crushed garlic onto the very top of her shoulderworking with her gown merely unlaced and not even peeled
away from her back-should not have been in any way erotic, if only because of the salve’s pungent smell, but touching
Alyson made his senses explode.

“We can eat soon,” he said. Food was not what he wanted
but Alyson might be hungry. The edges of her healing wound
were as pink as a peony. Delicately, so as not to hurt her, he
trailed his thumb down the delicate line of her spine. Sensing
her shiver, he steeled himself to his task again.

“We can use the bread Eva gave us for trenchers,” he remarked, as the savory smells of the pottage and pie filtered
through the barn. He had already burned his fingers on the
earthenware crocks when he placed them in the ashes of the
fire, but he was not about to admit that to his nervous little
healer-wife.

“There are the dried apples, too,” Alyson said in her low,
warm voice. “We can roast them”

“I can roast them. You need to pamper that shoulder.”

Conscious of his own rigid discomfort, Guillelm sat back
on his heels. He wondered when he would be able to walk to
the fire without hobbling in an undignified crouch. “It is good
English food, but scarcely the exotic dishes I hoped to serve
you,” he growled.

Alyson smiled and shook her head. “To me, it is a feast”

Under the bright stars, with the air about them perfumed
with hay and woodsmoke and the savor of venison and roasting apples, they shared their simple meal. To Alyson, water
had never tasted sweeter. To Guillelm, day-old maslin bread
had never been so delicious. The crab apples burst in their
mouths like a draught of hot spiced wine.

Relaxed and replete, they ate the soft cheese and then the
hazelnuts, rolling the shells between each other, making a
game of it.

“There are the owls again,” Alyson said, tilting her head to
listen.

Guillelm watched the firelight play over the fragile bones of
her face. He wanted her. He had wanted her for a long time.

“Dragon?”

Something of his tension must have shown in his face. He
attempted a hasty smile that felt more like another of what
Tom called his “gravestone grins.”

“Guillelm, what is it?” Alyson reached toward him.

“No,” he warned darkly. “Not unless you take it further.
Much further.”

She could do this, Alyson marveled. Moving from their
hearthspace, she glided lower on their rough bed. She placed
a hand on his foot, her palm covering the ankle bone, and
looked up at the man she loved.

Guillelm’s dark eyes bored into hers. “I have always
wanted you,” he said.

She had not touched him with such leisure and intimacy
since their bath together. Alyson took off his shoes and ran her
hand along the length of his lower leg; one hand and then the
other, learning him over again. He quivered under her hands,
the sinews and muscles tensing, feeling harder than bone but
warmer. Through his thin leggings, the hairs on his legs were
surprisingly soft, his flesh solid and at the same time yielding,
both rough and polished. His eyes never left hers.

“I know I have sometimes been curt with you” His speech
came in stops and spurts as she curved the fingers of her hand
across his knee. “People are always around. It has driven me
mad. Not being able to touch you when I want to, to hold
you-“

His large hands bunched into fists by his side, then unclenched. He was sitting on their mattress with his back
against the greater mound of hay, his legs thrust straight out
in front of him. He was breathing slowly, deliberately, and a strong, dark tide of color had risen in his tanned, handsome
face. The firelight threw the intent brightness of his gaze into
stark relief.

“Alyson,” he said urgently, using her name almost as a plea.

He was waiting for a word from her, she realized, holding
himself until then under an iron restraint.

“I am sorry,” she whispered. “I do not mean to tease you”

Now that she finally had Guillelm where she had dreamed
of having him for so long alone, finding her desirable-she
was suddenly besieged by a thousand doubts of inexperience.
What if he expected a miraculous seduction? “I do not want
to do anything wrong”

She was blushing, no doubt scarlet in the face, but she
knew she must not look away from him. She wanted no shadows, no Lord Robert or Heloise between them. Surely I can
do this, she thought. I love him.

Alyson withdrew her hands and knelt up on the prickly
mattress, undoing her belt and then the plait of her hair with
cold, fumbling fingers. It was harder for her to hold his eyes
than it had been for her to keep her ground against the knight
at the joust who had tried to attack her.

“I want you to hold me,” she heard herself say. “Please,
Guillelm. Hold me. Love me”

He was already moving. In the space of a breath, Guillelm
enveloped her in a rib-crushing embrace, his face flooded
with energy. “Mother of God, I was afraid you would never
ask! Alyson, my wife, my sweet little healer.”

He kissed her lips, forehead, nose and throat, saying again,
“I was afraid I had lost you, that you perhaps had changed in
your feelings toward me”

“I changed to you?” Alyson wondered. “I thought the
same. The very same”

Each began to laugh in sheer relief, laughing afresh when a fox yapped from somewhere on the downs outside, as if in
protest at their levity.

“Come here” Guillelm swung her up into his arms, rolling
off the bed and carrying her closer to the fire. “Let me look
at you”

For Alyson, the gentle collision of his chest and flanks
against her body robbed her of words and even thought. She
could only feel, skin against skin. Her arm, pressing against
Guillelm’s belly.

He kissed her throat, sending a lazy wave of pleasure sweeping through Alyson’s body that made her toes curl.

“I love you,” she said, the words easy to say because they
were true.

Brighter than the tumbling flames, his eyes and face glowed
with feeling. “You are so lovely. Let me see you-all of you”

He began to tease her blue gown off her legs and higher,
gently trailing the soft linen past her thighs, her hips, her slender waist.

“Put me down, please,” Alyson begged, longing to be free
of the clinging cloth.

He did so instantly, his face showing an uncertain shyness
that she was almost ashamed of evoking. “It is all right,”
she said.

Swiftly, before she lost courage, Alyson unfastened the
lacing of her gown and stepped out of the loosened garment
and her white undershift, hanging both over a nearby standing
rake. The silver coronet followed, and the rest of her jewels
dropped into a small, glittering heap onto the dirt floor of the
barn. Standing stiffly, naked and never so glad of her unbound
flowing hair, she spoke with her head down, staring at Guillelm’s well-shaped feet.

“Dragon, I am-“

She was not certain what she would have said next, only
that she was here, but Guillelm said gently, “Sssh” Stepping across the dry earth, he embraced her again, enfolding her in
his arms with such a look of wonder and desire that she
blushed and closed her eyes.

“You are beautiful,” she heard him say. “Beautiful and honorable and appealing. A man would have to be dead not to
be bewitched by you”

He lifted and carried her back to their bedspace, laying her
down on her cloak. Stripping off so swiftly that he was almost
a blur of movement, he came beside her and drew her closer
still, so that she was lying full length on top of him.

“A little less hard for you, I think, than the ground, even
with our bedding.” He blew softly on her eyelids. “Are you
ever going to open your eyes?”

Stubbornness urged Alyson to respond to such a direct,
amused challenge, but she was distracted by strange, new sensations. With her breasts pressed against Guillelm’s chest and
her nipples brushing against his chest hairs, her breath seemed
to have dissolved into her throat. Her slender legs, long for her
height, rested on his, her toes pressed against his calves. He
shifted under her, moving slowly so she could accustom herself to the touch of a man in this way, his thighs supporting her
easily, their muscled potency as hard and flawless as new iron.
His entire body seemed as enveloping and comforting as a hot
bath. But it was not a passive reassurance. She could feel his
obvious arousal. His entire skin seemed to crackle with
energy. The firm embrace and gentle clashes of their bodies
made her mouth dry and Alyson shyly conscious again of that
place between her legs.

“Alyson?”

He moved again as she ducked her head and burrowed her
face against his shoulder, wishing she was more strutting,
more like the deadly Heloise. She found everything about
him intriguing yet familiar; this embrace was new to her and
yet it felt right.

“This is not something you learn from potions or books,”
she admitted, kissing an old scar close to the beguiling crease
of his right elbow.

“No, little healer. I know it is entirely fresh to you”

The solemn tenderness of his voice made her feel welcome
in his arms and more confident, so that when his hands began
to caress her, she allowed her fingers to wander, too.

“God!” His breath came in rapid gasps as Alyson’s hand
flowed down his right flank and across his lower back, exploring that powerfully seductive hollow close to the base of his
spine. “Your hands. Your fingers!”

“My shoulder is healing and my fingers are fine,” Alyson
said, a little smugly, part of her reveling in his clear response,
the way his legs jerked and his hips rose from the mattress,
inviting her to go further, touch more. Then she too was lost
in sensation as Guillelm turned them both slightly so that she
was still supported in his arms but more side-on, and the fingers of his left hand were cupping her breast and the fingers
of his right hand stroking her back, lower, then lower.

“So lovely,” he said. He kissed her, his mouth and tongue
flicking and teasing against hers, his thumb softly circling her
perked nipples.

Murmuring reassurance as his stretching hand glided over
her jutting hip bone, he touched as if she were as delicate as
rare glass. “Look at me, sweet”

How do I open my eyes? Alyson wondered, her body sunk
in an intoxicating wonder. Then she gasped, her eyes flying
open as Guillelm fondled her bare bottom. He smiled at her,
a certain tension in his eyes.

“There is more,” he said, rolling her closer to him, kissing
her again, stroking her naked form from the top of her spine
down to her calves.

“Your skin is finer than silk,” he muttered, trailing little
kisses down her breastbone and across each breast. His hand never left her bottom, his palm rubbing over the soft mounds,
his fingers circling each cheek until she felt dizzy with a
building excitement that seemed to begin in her loins and
extend in a whirling, stomach-buzzing sweep to her breasts
and throat and lips.