Enchantress Mine (65 page)

A small smile played at the corners of Mairin’s mouth. Eada was hardly being subtle, but suddenly Mairin began to wonder if perhaps her mother were not right. Perhaps she should forgive Josselin. Then she pushed the thought from her head, saying to her sister, “Would it please you to call the lady Eada mother?”

“Ohh, yes!” Blanchette said happily, and once more tears threatened to overflow her lovely soft blue eyes.

“What of me?” said Josselin, joining them. “Will you not introduce me to your sister, enchantress, or are you still too angry at me to do so?”

“My lord husband, Josselin de Combourg,” said Mairin without formality.

Josselin’s green-gold eyes twinkled with mischief. “My lady Blanchette,” he said warmly, taking the girl’s dainty hand and raising it to his lips to kiss. “I bid you welcome to Aelfleah.”

“My lord,” said Blanchette in return, removing her hand from his grasp with an expertise that caused Mairin to stifle a giggle.

Regaining control of her emotions, Mairin called to Dagda to come and meet Blanchette. The big man joined the family grouping, and looked down into the girl’s eyes. She returned his gaze shyly, but she did not flinch from his piercing gaze. Finally, Dagda smiled.

“I see much of your father in you, my lady Blanchette,” he said approvingly in his deep booming voice.

Blanchette smiled for the first time, and Mairin thought how very, very pretty she was. “Oh,” she said, “you could not have said a nicer thing to me, Dagda! You knew my father, did you not? Please tell me about him.”

“I will be happy to tell you all I know of Ciaran St. Ronan, child,” said Dagda, “but I find I am growing powerfully hungry. The supper hour is at hand, and I am not a good storyteller on an empty belly.” He looked at Blanchette with seemingly critical eyes. “You look as if you could use some good meals,” he said. “Our good Aelfleah food will soon fatten you up.”

“Come, child, I will show you where to wash away the dust of your travels,” said Eada. “We have prepared my son’s old room for you. Brand would have liked you. He liked all the pretty girls,” and Eada led Blanchette away.

“Well, enchantress, are you sorry that she is come now that she is here?” Josselin demanded of her when they suddenly found themselves alone.

“Nay,” Mairin answered him. “Poor child! She has not had an easy time, has she? Blanche, it appears, could hardly wait to foster her out to the de Montgomeries. How different it would have been for us both had our father only lived. I do not think anyone has ever told that girl she was loved.

“I remember we once discussed Blanche’s intelligence, and decided she had little. Now I know we were right! Imagine giving her baby to my old nurse for safekeeping. Melaine adored me, and although she would never have been so cruel to anyone deliberately, she could not resist whispering to Blanchette of me. Now I wonder if my poor little sister’s desire for the convent is to escape her mother’s sins or atone for them? Or does she have a genuine calling?”

“You will have time over the next six months to find out, Mairin,” he answered her.

“Aye, I will,” she said thoughtfully; and then, “Josselin?”

“Yes, enchantress?” He had taken Blanchette’s place in the chair opposite his wife.

“Josselin, I am sorry for the anger between us,” she said in a rush of words. “My mother has told me over and over again how fortunate I have been in my life, always surrounded by love, and though I heard the words and knew in my heart that she was right, I could not put the anger I felt in my soul from me. I am still not certain I can, and yet seeing little Blanchette today, hearing how lonely her life has been . . . It makes me realize that I do not want to continue fighting with you, my lord.”

“Mairin, I never meant to hurt you,” he said, “and I would never harm William.”

“I know that,” she answered him, and then she sighed deeply. “I do not know why I get so angry. It felt like such a betrayal of me when, in that single instant, you seemed to doubt me. I remembered what had happened before . . . in Byzantium with Basil . . . when he betrayed me.”

“Basil betrayed you?” He had not heard this before. “How? With another woman?”

“With a man,” she answered softly.

“With a man?”
Josselin looked stunned.

“The people of Byzantium are different from us in some of their manners and ways,” Mairin said quietly. “They are apt to take lovers of the same sex, and no one thinks it strange. Before my first husband wed with me he had a male lover. His name was Bellisarius, and he was the most famous actor of his time in Constantinople. He murdered Basil, or so they told me. Then there were others who claimed that the two men had committed suicide so they might always be together.

“I was very young when I married Basil. He was a very wonderful man. He was as handsome as I am beautiful. He was educated and kind, and had a marvelous sense of humor. I had a blissful, if brief, life with him, but I came to him a complete innocent. He made certain that I stayed that way, sheltering me tenderly, even as my parents had sheltered me from the world. Imagine my shock at his death, and then the gossip surrounding that death! For some weeks I lost all memory of him and our life together. It was a terrible time. When I did regain my memory, I decided that Basil had never loved me, that he had deliberately and wantonly betrayed me. Later, I came to realize that that was not so. He had loved me, and I was fortunate to have had so tender and thoughtful a first lover. I will never, however, be certain of how Basil died, and that will haunt me all my days.

“I trusted Basil completely, and so I trusted you, Josselin, for is it not a wife’s duty to cleave unto her husband? Your doubts seemed, at the time, an even worse betrayal than Basil’s, for that apparent betrayal threatened my baby more than it threatened me.” She laughed somewhat ruefully. “I have behaved very childishly, and I am not a child any longer as I was when Basil died.”

He understood so much now! Things he had never before comprehended that had seemed mysterious about her. Leaning forward, he reached out and took her two hands in his. “I am not a wildly handsome and clever prince, Mairin. Neither am I a saint. I am but a rough knight, a servant of the king, a simple man. But I am a man who loves you, enchantress, and I will always love you. I may not always understand, and there may be times as we grow older together that I lose patience with you, but I will never stop loving you.” He raised her hands to his lips, and tenderly kissed them, the backs, the palms, the soft skin of her inner wrists. His green-gold eyes met her violet ones in silent pledge.

“Pax, my lord?” she said softly.

“Pax,” he answered her.

Eada, returning to the hall with Blanchette, saw their two heads together, and observed Josselin kissing her daughter’s hands. Mairin sat quietly and unprotesting. There was a smile upon her lips now, a smile that Eada had not seen in the weeks since she had been home. She turned to Blanchette, saying, “I think your coming, child, has worked a miracle, and I thank God for it.”

“There is nothing I would not do for Mairin,” said the young girl fervently. “Oh, Mother Eada, do you think she will love me despite my mother’s behavior?”

“I know my elder daughter,” said Eada, giving Blanchette a small hug about her slender shoulders. “She loves you already, child. Mairin’s temper is pure Celt, but her large heart is also Celt. What she gives she does not give lightly, nor does she take away a gift once given. You have come home at last, Blanchette St. Ronan, and we welcome you to Aelfleah with all our hearts.”

Blanchette could feel her own heart swell with happiness at Eada’s words. She suddenly realized that all of her life she had been seeking a family. Now she had found one in the most unlikely manner. She settled comfortably and happily into life at Aelfleah. Very much in awe of her elder sister, she nonetheless adored Mairin openly. As for her niece and nephew, Maude and William delighted her as the population of children at the de Montgomerie castle had not. Perhaps it was because these two children were her family. Her blood relations. Blanchette found that for the first time in her life she was genuinely content.

“I wonder what her mother would say to see her here with us?” Mairin chuckled to Josselin as they bundled together in bed the night before her birthday.

“Blanche would be envious, I think. She was a mean-spirited woman,” he answered, “but let us not speak on her, enchantress.”

“What shall we speak on then, my lord?” Her voice was teasing as was her manner. Her eyes danced mischievously in the golden light of the single candle by their bed which cast dark shadows upon their fair bodies.

“I should rather not speak at all,” he said with meaning.

“Then what shall we do, my lord?” They both lay on their sides facing one another, propped upon an elbow. “I am at my lord husband’s command.”

Reaching out, he cupped her head in his big hand, and then leaning forward, he kissed her soft lips. “Does this give you ideas, lady?” he said low.

“You must promise me not to bellow lest you wake William,” she replied demurely.

“I do not bellow,” he protested.

“You always say that,” Mairin laughed, “but you do!”

“William won’t know what we’re doing even if he does awaken,” Josselin reasoned.

“And how fortunate that Maude has expressed a desire to be with her aunt Blanchette,” chuckled Mairin.

The hand that had held her head in embrace moved about to caress her face. Gently he rubbed his knuckles against her cheek, down around her chin, and up the other cheek. With a barely audible sigh she pressed against his hand. His fingers played over her lips, and opening her mouth she nibbled at them playfully with sharp little teeth. Their eyes met, and they smiled at each other. Trailing his fingers between her breasts, he pushed her long red-gold hair aside so he might feast his eyes upon those magnificant twin glories. Her nipples hardened beneath his very ardent gaze.

Lying back, Mairin drew her husband’s head down to the valley between her breasts, and breathing deep, he inhaled the faint lilac fragrance she seemed to favor that clung to her skin. He rubbed his cheek against her breasts grumbling as he did, “Will you please get a wet-nurse for William, enchantress? It is extremely unfair that these beauties,” and now he fondled her breasts lovingly, “be the sole possession of a toothless babe unable to appreciate their finer points.” He licked teasingly at a nipple, and almost immediately a pearl of her milk appeared which he appreciatively lapped up.

“My lord,” she half-protested, “would you deny your heir his only sustenance?”

“Let some fresh-cheeked farmer’s wife with big tits like cow’s udders give him sustenance,” Josselin said. “These beauties should belong to me alone!”

“Oh wicked and lustful man,” she scolded him laughingly, “perhaps this will help ease your ardor!” With a playful push she rolled him from her and onto his back. Then before he might protest this treatment, Mairin mounted her husband, clasping him between her milky thighs and looking down at him archly. Her lovely breasts thrust boldly forward, their moss-rose nipples easy temptation. “Well, my lord,” she said, “must I tell you what to do next? You are usually quite full of wicked ideas.”

Reaching up, he began to play with her breasts, teasing at the nipples with delicious expertise, causing her stomach to flutter with pleasure, and her secret place to throb with eager longing. Unable to control herself, Mairin’s slender hips wiggled with growing excitement, grinding themselves down quite provocatively into his groin. Just when she thought she could bear no more of these delights, his two hands clamped about her neat waist, and he slowly impaled her upon his aching shaft. Mairin’s back arched, and with a little moan she threw her head back, her eyes closed.

“Ride me,” he growled fiercely. “Ride me, enchantress mine!”

With almost mindless obedience, she heeded his order, leaning her breasts forward to brush against his chest, her hands bracing themselves on either side of his head. Reaching up he held her hips which worked themselves up and down, up and down in sensuous rhythm, her still-tight sheath encasing and releasing his hot manhood as his mouth hungrily fastened itself upon hers, kissing her with wild abandon.

When he saw her visibly beginning to tire, he swiftly and gently rolled her back over so that now it was he who was mounted upon her. Mairin’s arms tightened about Josselin’s neck. She was vaguely aware of their change of position, but she was far too lost in pleasure to be fully cognizant of anything. It had been like this since their blissful reunion of five days prior.
Why,
the thought drifted through her mind, why did I ever deny myself this joy? She could feel him, hard and hungry, within her tingling body, thrusting, withdrawing, thrusting, withdrawing until she thought she would explode with happiness, but instead she seemed to crave even more, and she could not understand it, for their coupling was the best it had ever been.

“More,” he groaned against her ear. “Ahh, enchantress, I want more of you!”

She heard his plea, yet she did not fully comprehend his words. Still, she wrapped her legs about him allowing him deeper penetration of her body, and Mairin felt him shudder against her. She soared within the endless sky of their mutual passion, her hands smoothing down his long back, tangling within his tawny hair as she rode the wave of her love for him. Within her own body she could feel the tumultuous tremors of her own passion beginning to come to a soaring crest. Her nails dug into the flesh of his back, scoring him cruelly, and she heard her own voice moaning with sweet fulfillment as together they were swept over the peak.

“Ahhhh, enchantress! Ahhhhhh!”

As the pleasure filled her body, leaving it weak and sated, Mairin giggled softly. “You see . . . you bellow, Josselin,” she teased him lovingly.

Lying atop her still, he took her face within his two hands and tenderly kissed first her nose, and then her lips. “I suppose,” he said with a lazy grin, “that I do, but you wouldn’t have me any other way, I hope.”