A Perfect Knight (Knights of Passion Series 2) (2 page)

“Simon!”

Someone was shaking him. Simon’s eyes opened wide and he sat up. And saw who it was.

“My lady, what
are . . . ?”

She put a finger to her lips. Her hair was lying over her shoulder in a long plait
and she wore a silken robe to cover herself. A candle sat on the floor by the door where she had placed it and in its light he could see she was agitated.

“My lady?”
he said again, but this time in a whisper.

“I cannot sleep,” she said, shaking her head, her hands twisting in her lap. “You sing of love and devotion and all I can think of is my husband
. I tried so hard to love him, to be as I thought a wife should be, but he wanted to possess me utterly. And his jealousy . . . if I should so much as glance at another man . . . He once whipped his manservant who was gazing at me too long.”

Simon blinked. He moved to cover her hand with his, knowing if he said or did the wrong thing she would run from him and never come back.

“I thought there must be something wrong with me. The romances I hear, the romances of Lady Eleanor’s court, tell me of perfect love, but my husband was not like that. And now you say that Lady Eleanor was not loved at the end, that King Henry looked elsewhere.”

His hand tightened on hers. “My lady,” he murmured
. “Eleanor and Henry loved each other once but their love faded and grew stale. That does not mean there is no perfect love.”

She considered this.

“Can I speak plainly, Lady Yolanda?”

She nodded.

“I believe love should not be the pure, cold and distant love of my songs. It is hot and sweaty. Flesh pressed together, bodies moving to a rhythm. Mouths together, tongues tasting, the ache of need, the wave of desire that grows and grows until . . .” He smiled. “Until you reach the crest and suddenly all your lives are before you.”

She listened and then she frowned. “No,” she said. “You speak of physical love, Simon. That is something different altogether.”

He moved closer still.

“But it is both! Don’t you see? The bodies together, melding, and the hearts joined, and the minds
aligned. Together it is perfection.”

She contemplated this a moment. She was playing with his hand, her fingers smoothing his flesh, and then touching the hard calluses made by his lute on his fingers and thumb.
She spoke awkwardly.

“My husband
made me his chattel. I have never been loved. Not in the way you describe.”

She looked up at him, and there was so much longing and sadness in her face that he was lost. Simon leaned in and pressed his lips to hers, gently, without passion. Her breath came out in a gasp, warming his skin, and then her hands came to rest on his shoulders. He realised then that of course he was naked and he’d quite forgotten about it.

Her lips clung, and he ran his tongue along them, tracing their shape and softness. She made a little moan and he kissed her harder, and this time there was passion. She responded, her body against his, and he could feel her breasts and the hard nubs at their peaks.

Triumph surged through him. He reached to fondle one plump mound, his thumb passing over the
tight little nipple again and again, until she trembled with desire.

“Is this what it feels like?” she murmured. “To love?”

“Yes, this is what it feels like.”

Carefully he slid down her robe and kissed each inch of skin he bared. She tasted sweet. With his hand he tilted her breast up to his mouth, and covered the peak, his tongue swirling around the nipple until she was squirming.
Then he put his mouth fully over the hard bud and sucked.

“Simon,” she said
. “Oh Simon.”

“Your beauty makes me bold, lady,” he said huskily.

“I feel . . . I want . . .”

She writhed against him, as if she had been starved of a man’s touch for far too long.

His hand rested on her thigh beneath her robe and then moved higher. And felt something that should not be there. Simon’s eyes widened and flew to hers, and saw that the sadness in them had returned.

“
Yes. I wear a chastity belt,” she said bitterly. “My husband placed it upon me when he went to the Crusades so that no other man could enjoy me.” 

He could not believe it. He had heard of such things happening but
had thought they were mere myth. With shaking hands he stripped off her robe and beheld with his own eyes the barbaric metal girdle that hung from her waist, with a metal thong between her legs, covering her womanly parts, apart from a narrow opening for her to complete her bodily functions.

“Can you not take it off?” he
asked, eyes fixed upon the cruel contraption. Although smooth and decorated with strange symbols, the metal looked brutal and utterly unyielding against her creamy skin.

She
sighed and shook her head. “My husband took the key with him.”

“And
does that mean you must wear this weapon of torture forever?” Now his gaze rose to hers, shocked and horrified.

“
That was what he wanted,” she said, but her eyes begged for release.

Simon kissed her again,
and this time it was a promise. “I will free you, Lady Yolanda. I swear it.”

She drew her robe back a
round her and stood up. Her smile was tentative. Hopeful. “Thank you, Simon. No one else will do it, no one else can, but when you knelt before me tonight and asked me to give you a quest, I thought . . . I thought Simon can do it.”

Simon lay back down as the door closed. He would free her,
he told himself feverishly, and when he had, he would have her love and gratitude. Tonight she had shown him she was a woman who needed the love of a man, and Simon knew he would be that man.

*
**

The blacksmith eyed him curiously,
sweat running down his half clothed body as the fire roared and his hammer clanged. “Aye, I made the belt for Sir Edward,” he agreed. “I’m a locksmith as well as a blacksmith. At least I assisted in the making of it, with Sir Edward’s man Taskill. He had secret ways I didn’t understand.”

“Secret ways?”

“He muttered words over it, spells I reckon. And when he was finished, well, I’d never seen the like.”  

Simon frowned. This Taskill character worried him.

“You must know that Sir Edward died on Crusade with King Richard,” he said to the blacksmith.

“I know it.”

“Lady Yolanda has asked me to come to you. She wants a key to unlock the device now her husband is dead.”

“A key?” the man mocked, his eyes narrowed.

“Yes, you must have a key that fits it?”

“Sir
Edward had the only key. He was clear on that. Only one key and he had it.”

Simon shifted
his feet impatiently. “There must be a second copy. Didn’t he make some provision if he died? If he couldn’t come home to free his wife?”

“No, he had the only key
. He didn’t trust anyone else with one. Doted on her, he did. Old husband, young wife, you get the picture. He thought everyone was out to take her off him.”

“What about this man, Taskill? Where is he now?”

The blacksmith shrugged. “Gone off to foreign parts I reckon. Scotland or some such uncivilised place.”

“Can you make another key
to fit the lock?”

Simon was getting frustrated. Yolanda had told him about the blacksmith who made the metal girdle
under Taskill’s direction, and he’d had to ride for two days to find him.

“
I told you, I’d never seen anything like it before. It’s meant to stay on.”

“So there are no other keys that might fit?”

He sighed, shrugged, and after a moment went to a box on a bench in the corner. He took out a number of keys and handed them to Simon. “You can try these, but I don’t like your chances. That Taskill, he said no other key would fit it.”

“What about picking the lock? Can I do that?”

“Aye, you can try that, but again it was made with that in mind. It’s meant to stay on,” he repeated with satisfaction.

“What about cutting it off?” 

He shook his head. “I wouldn’t like to do that. Would more than likely injure the lady. Might kill her. And the metal . . . so strong, so hard, like nothing I’d ever seen before.”

Simon
felt his heart sink.

“It isn’t as tight as Sir Edward wanted it,” the blacksmith said. “I
insisted that she had more room, like. Just as well, too, or by now it would be rubbing her flesh raw. Seen some botched jobs like that, with sores and then infection setting in, and oftimes the woman dying in a fever. At least your lady won’t have to contend with that.”

No, thought Simon, she will just be prevented from ever lying with a man again. Ever lying with
me.
He remembered her writhing against him on his bed, her needs obvious. Yolanda had spoken of love; she wanted love. How could she live a life starved of love?

Furious
, Simon rode away. Sir Edward Arbuthnot the barbarian had left his wife in that contraption with no way of escape. Despite what the blacksmith said, could he have left a spare key with someone? But he had probably heard the story that Simon himself had heard, of the key to the chastity belt being left with the best friend and neighbour, who promptly rode over to the castle, released the lady, and took her to bed.

***

Sometimes Yolanda ached for a man to touch her; the frustration was almost unbearable. She knew that some women dedicated their lives to prayer or good works and never gave the sexual part of it a thought, but Yolanda was a woman who needed to be touched. Even Sir Edward, old as he was, had been able to perform that part of their marriage.

He was quick and rough
; he never caressed her as Simon had, but he’d been certain to ride her well and hard, and there had been some satisfaction in the rub of his flesh against hers. He had a way of clearing his throat, just before his climax, that put paid to her own enjoyment. And sometimes, while he rode her, she had dreamed of another man, a younger man, who would one day find her. Since Sir Edward had locked her into the metal girdle the frustration was growing worse every day. Sometimes it was unbearable.

When Simon had kissed and fondled her in his bed, when he had put his mouth on her breasts and suckled, she’d felt her body humming with desire. She’d felt her female parts swelling, aching, wanting. And then the look on Simon’s face when he’d seen . . . when he’d realised . . . Yolanda had wanted to hide herself away with shame.

She’d feared he would laugh, or turn from her. But he hadn’t. He’d pitied her and sworn to free her, and God help her, she’d believed him. Now he’d set off on his quest and she could do nothing but wait for his return, and hope he was successful.

And meanwhile her body ached with her unfulfilled needs.

***

“My lady?”

She’d been seated at the window, staring out at the falling snow and she took a moment to turn to him. Simon thought she was thinner, her face sadder, but it brightened when she saw him standing there in her private chamber.

Quickly she
dismissed her ladies, ignoring their knowing glances.

“I have keys to try, my lady,” he said, coming forward and opening his hands. The keys spilled onto her skirts and she touched them in wonder.

“Do you think one of these might free me?”

“I hope one of these may open your belt,
Lady Yolanda.”

When she’d drawn
up her skirts over her slender legs to disclose the metal belt, he paused a moment. Despite what the blacksmith said there were red marks on her creamy skin, where the metal had rubbed against her. Was she ever comfortable in the contraption or was it a constant niggling reminder of her distress?

The lock
was over her hip, where the two sides of the belt came together. Simon took the first key, but it did not fit and he tossed it aside. Yolanda watched him, half propped up on the cushions on her bed, her body trembling with desperate hope.

Simon tried each key, sometimes twice. One almost seemed to fit but didn’t, and that was the worst disappointment. Once they had tried them all, he picked them up and tried them again, just in case he had made a mistake, but none of them turned the lock. None of them unlocked the belt.

Yolanda tried to be still, to be patient, but there were tears in her eyes when he threw the final key down with a curse.

“I will be forever in this thing,” she said in a little voice.
“That was what my husband wanted.”

“No!” He caught her hands in his
and then drew her into his arms, holding her tight. “I am not done yet,” he murmured in her ear. “I promise you, I will succeed.”

Her trembling eased, and he felt her fingers stroking his fair hair where it curled at his nape. He
began to nuzzle against her neck, then gently nip at her earlobe, making her shiver and giggle. His lips trailed along her cheekbone, finally finding her mouth, already eager for his. He found the tip of her tongue, slipping his own between her parted lips, dancing the dance of desire. When she groaned, lying back in his arms, he cupped her breast, gently squeezing her plump flesh, before using his mouth on her.