Entreat Me (31 page)

She climbed in and sat down.  Steamy water rose to submerge her to her shoulders.  She emitted a low moan that sent heat flooding his body and made him hard as stone.  No eunuch here.  Louvaen motioned to him with a languid hand.  “Are you just going to stand there?”

He joined her, positioning himself so that his back reclined against her front, and he sat cradled between her legs.  Louvaen slid an arm under one of his and the other over his opposite shoulder, linking her fingers together just above his heart.  He sank low in the tub and laid his head on her shoulder, savoring the feel of her surrounding him.  The aches and pains plaguing him lessened, eased by the water’s heat and buoyancy.  They’d return full-force once he left the bath, but he’d deal with them later.

Louvaen didn’t immediately set to scrubbing him.  Instead, she occupied herself with dropping kisses along his neck, across his cheek and against his temple.  Ballard closed his eyes, content to bask in her affections.  He’d happily prune up in the tub for hours and let the water go cold if she did this to him the entire time.  His peace lasted only a few minutes.

“Did you instruct Ambrose to lock me in my room once the flux was finished?”

His eyes snapped open.  Suddenly, the sensuous bath became an avenue for a possible drowning.  Had he possessed charm, wit and a less honed sense of survival, he might have attempted to pacify her with false platitudes.  He chose to answer her in a way she herself would have done—with straightforward honesty.

“No.  I wasn’t capable of speech at the time.  Ambrose knows me well enough though.  Had I been able to talk, I would have ordered it.”

She twitched against him as if suppressing the urge to shove his head underwater.  “Why?”  A wealth of annoyance weighted that single word.

Ambrose told him she’d been like a wild thing in a trap, screeching her rage and insistence to be let out.  The sorcerer had unspelled the locked door from a safe distance down the hall.  Louvaen had burst out of her room and raced to the stairs.  “Looked like a crazed ell-woman seeking her next victim,” he said.

With Cinnia’s upcoming marriage to Gavin, Ballard’s time with Louvaen was over.  She hadn’t changed her mind and asked to stay; he hadn’t repeated the request he’d made in the stables.  Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t.  None of the women could stay at Ketach Tor.  In a few days time, only he, Ambrose and Gavin would remain, and in the end only Ambrose.  He didn’t want Louvaen to leave his home with her strongest memory of him being that of a gibbering wreck convulsed with agony and too dangerous to help.

“You’re returning to your father,” he said.  “I don’t much care for the idea that this is how you’ll remember me, and I’m handsome now compared to the foul thing Ambrose and Gavin pull out of that cell after every flux.”

Silence settled between them, and Louvaen took up the task of untangling the vines matted with his hair.

“Do you know what I remember best about Thomas?”  Her lips grazed his temple.  “It was the way he laughed.  His eyes would crinkle first and then the skin at the top of his nose between his eyebrows.  His shoulders would roll, and he’d tuck his chin into his chest.”  Ballard envied Thomas the fondness in his widow’s voice.  “He’d not uttered a sound until all of a sudden he’d let out this great roaring laugh.  I swear he made the windows rattle.  Even his hair and beard seemed to laugh.”  She tugged on a knot of bittersweet vine resting against Ballard’s neck.  “This is nothing compared to Thomas’s mop, and he wasn’t cursed.”

She paused and her voice grew thick with unshed tears.  “His laugh was a gift because even in your bleakest mood you couldn’t help but laugh with him when you heard it.”  Her arms tightened across Ballard’s chest.  “He died of the plague, but it’s his laughter I remember—and will always remember most—about Thomas Duenda.”

Four hundred years earlier he would have paupered himself, defied a king and single-handedly conquered an empire if that’s what it took to win this woman.  The irony that all too soon he’d willingly let her ride out of Ketach Tor for the very same reason he once would have fought so fiercely to possess her made him want to howl his fury.  He took one of her hands instead and kissed her healing fingertips.  He’d learned of her strange magic and how her spinning wheel spun out her grief.   “How will you remember me?” he said.

Her soft laughter tickled his ear.  “I’ll think of the man, so grave and dignified, who gave me a queen’s dagger.  Or maybe the lusty lord who figured out the way to lure me to his bed was to warm the sheets.”

She wiggled from behind him, slippery thighs sliding across his as she changed positions.  Water sloshed over the rim of the tub, and Ballard held her hips as she settled into his lap facing him.  She curved her palms around his face, her expression teasing and pensive by turns.  “From castle lord to forest king.  I never thought I’d fall in love with a Green Man.”

She leaned into him, breasts pressed to his chest, as she opened his mouth with hers and swept her tongue inside to entwine with his.  She tasted of sorrow sweetened by the cyser Magda brewed.  He hoped she’d remember him.  He would recall nothing of her, and that knowledge made his own kiss as bitter as the poisonous vine entangled in his hair.

Louvaen ended the kiss first.  Her thumbs caressed the ridges of his cheekbones below his eyes.  “If I’d known you’d suffer so much for it, I would never have said I loved you.  I’m sorry, Ballard.”

Ballard wanted to castigate her for telling him something so profound after he’d fallen asleep.  He’d nearly gone to his knees when the sorcerer recounted the events leading up to Gavin’s harsh and sudden transformation.  Afterwards, he’d locked Louvaen out of the solar, dreading the moment when he’d reveal himself to her and watch as the love she declared for him turned to revulsion.

His fears had been for naught, but he still wished mightily he had heard those longed-for words from her himself.

He caressed her back from shoulder to hip, tracing the indentation of her spine and the matched pair of dimples just above her buttocks.  Her nipples tightened beneath his gaze, the areolas pebbling in anticipation of his touch.  He didn’t disappoint her.

She moaned his name and arched into him as he took one breast into his mouth and suckled the tip.  Her hands kneaded his shoulders, and her hips rocked back and forth, sending waves of water splashing onto the floor.

Ballard moved to her other breast, kissing an ever diminishing circle around the swell until he caught her nipple and worried it gently between his teeth.  Louvaen’s moans turned to growls, and she squeezed his hips between her thighs, the rocking rhythm she’d set picking up speed.

He stroked her sides, descending lower until his hands rode her hips.  He pulled away, leaving her panting and wide-eyed.  “Tell me, my beautiful Louvaen,” he said in a voice made raspy with days of agonized screaming.  “I have no more time and soon no more memory.  Give me the words when I’m awake.”

She stilled in his embrace except for her hands.  They slid from his shoulders, up his neck and returned to his face.  Her gaze, more black than gray now, bore into him.  “I love you,” she said softly.  They both tensed, but no snapping noise burst in their ears, no floor boards heaved, and no thorny roses broke through the window to attack them.

Ballard lifted Louvaen enough to sit up straighter.  “Again,” he said and lowered her slowly onto his lap.

“I love you.”  Her hands returned to his shoulders, bracing her weight as the tip of his cock nudged between her thighs, seeking.

“Again,” he repeated.  She sank onto him, and he groaned his pleasure as he slid inside her, oblivious to any pain.

“I love you.  Love you.  Love you,” she chanted on short breaths, the rhythm of her declaration keeping time with the motion of her hips as she rode him in the water.

He followed where she led, guided by the grip of her hands and thighs, the clench of internal muscles and her demanding kisses.  His busy hands caressed her wet skin, holding her tightly as he thrust into her.  Steam and sweat mingled to trickle down his neck and soak the hair at his temples.

She found her release first, nails digging into his arms before she fell forward and bit him where his neck met his shoulder.  The tiny burst of pain, so different from the curse’s lash, sent him over the edge.  Ballard cried out her name as his hips surged upward, hard enough to lift them both half out of the water.  They sank together, sending another rolling tide over the tub’s rim to douse the floor.

Louvaen rested in his embrace, limp and momentarily docile.  Ballard fought to catch his breath and the overwhelming torpor brought on by his climax and the steamy water.  He stroked her shoulders and toyed with her knotted braids.

“We’ve destroyed the floor,” she murmured into his neck.  “Magda will kill us.”

He undid one of her braids to twirl it around his finger.  “I’ll let you hide the axe.”

She chortled and gave him a quick kiss on the tip of his nose.  She wiggled out of his arms, and he groaned his disappointment when he slipped from her body.  “We can’t stay in here all day, Ballard.”

“Why not?”  Ballard thought it a fine idea, and the wedding wasn’t until later.  They had a couple of hours still and plenty of hot rocks to keep the water warm.

Louvaen stood, offering him another chance to ogle her.  She stepped gracefully out of the tub to retrieve one of the drying cloths stacked on a nearby table.  Ballard relaxed in the water and watched as she dried and shrugged into her shift.  “As lord of the castle, you can lounge about all day.  I need to help my sister prepare for her wedding.”  She motioned to him.  “Stand up.  I’ll scrub your head.  You can take care of the rest.”

“High-handed scold,” he muttered before heaving himself to a standing position.”Maybe I should throw you over my shoulder, take you to bed and have my way with you.”

“You’ll not drop me atop those bitter sheets, you lusty tup,” she admonished before dumping a pail of lukewarm water over his head.  “Not before they’ve seen a warming pan.”

He stood compliant under her ministrations, wincing only once when even her careful washing of his hair still managed to yank a few of the slender vines.  He washed his body while she finished dressing and used all but one of the drying cloths to sop up the puddles staining the floor.  He hoped Magda was in a forgiving mood.

He chased her off when it came time for him to don clothing.  “See to your sister,” he said.  “This is her wedding day; she needs you.”  He bowed gallantly.  “I’ll visit with my son.”

Louvaen took his face in her hands and kissed him.  Ballard thought she’d leave him then, but she paused, her expression somber.  “Cinnia can’t remain at Ketach Tor, Ballard—even as Gavin’s wife.”

“No, she can’t.  None of the women can.”  He wished he could refute her statement, give them both hope that with their admissions of love, she and Cinnia had broken the curse.  “The next flux will finish me and Gavin.  Ambrose and I planned for such an event long ago.”  Her eyes narrowed, suspicion igniting her gaze.  “Magda and her maids will leave in a week’s time.  We’d thought to send them to a village a few leagues from here.”

“No, they’ll come with us,” she declared.  “It would be the worst sort of cruelty to take Cinnia from Gavin right after the wedding.  We can wait a sennight before returning home.  Magda and the others are welcome to stay with us as long as they want.  My father would enjoy the company.”

His heart ached with loving her.  She’d offered hearth and home to his household with no promise of monetary help from him.  There was no question of him giving it.  The Hallis family might not be noble by blood, but his treasury would make them so once he was dead.  And she’d given him a week of her company.  He’d pay a king’s ransom for such a gift.

He lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles.  “You realize Magda will want Ambrose to join her later.”  He tried not to laugh as twin frown lines furrowed the space between her eyebrows.

Her features pinched as if she’d bitten into something sour.  “We have a comfortable barn.”

He chuckled, kissed her hand a second time before letting her go and opened the door.

Louvaen ran a caressing hand down his arm before disappearing into the hall.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

He finished dressing once she left.  The cotehardie and bliaud were the ones he wore for Modrnicht.  He felt ridiculous in the finery now, especially when he intended to cover up with a cloak.

“Who wrestled a sea monster and lost?”

Ballard looked up from belting the cotehardie to find Gavin picking his way around the remaining puddles of water scattered across the solar’s floor.  The younger man paused and eyed the axe in the corner before turning to stare at the door.  He began to laugh.  “I’d possess the temperament of a dragon had you two created me.”

“And a hawk’s beak for a nose,” Ballard shot back.  He met him halfway and clapped a hand on his son’s shoulder, wishing he hadn’t isolated himself from the one person who truly understood what he went through at each flux.

As stunningly handsome as his mother had been beautiful, Gavin cut a noble figure in a cotehardie of silk brocade that highlighted his wide chest and trim waist.  His hair fell over broad shoulders in waves, and he wore a short sword belted low at his hip.

No one would ever guess that a few days ago this dignified man had been overwhelmed by a malice that reduced him to a creature Louvaen so brutally but accurately called “a bat-faced cur.”

“I’m told you’ll marry the beautiful Hallis girl today,” Ballard said.  “This is still what you want?”

Gavin gave a vigorous nod.  “As much as I’ve wanted the life of a normal man.  Maybe more.”  His gaze searched his father’s face.  “I feared you wouldn’t be able to stand with me when Cinnia and I married.”  Shadows darkened his eyes.  “Who knew a woman’s love would turn the curse so vicious?”

Ballard shrugged.  “A woman’s hatred brought it to life.”  He turned to retrieve his cloak.

Gavin grasped his elbow, making him pause.  “I’d take it back if I could.  Shoulder what should be mine.”

“I wouldn’t let you.”  Ballard never had a day’s regret in agreeing to Ambrose’s plan of redirecting the curse to him.

Gavin’s grip tightened.  “Curse or no curse, I am proud to be the son of the noblest of men.”

Floundering before Gavin’s unexpected praise, Ballard sought footing in wry humor.  “Good thing I’m the ugliest man too, or I might have challenged you for the lovely Cinnia.”  He smiled at Gavin’s disbelieving snort.

“She’s far too soft for your tastes.   You like them with teeth and claws to match yours.”  The two grinned at each other until Gavin’s features turned somber once more.  “She’s a walking sheaf of dried thistles, but Louvaen is also kind.  I’m glad she chose otherwise, but I wouldn’t have forbidden her from taking Cinnia with her right after the wedding.  I don’t know that it’s safe for anyone to be here with us, even now with the flux at ebb tide.”

The same thought plagued Ballard.  The hard inner jerk on his spine always forewarned him of a coming flux.  In the past they had time to prepare for the curse’s onslaught.  Ballard feared they’d get no warning before the next flux.

Gavin continued.  “It’s dangerous for the women to travel with pack horses loaded down with gold.  Ambrose will enchant the contents of the treasury so they appear inside Mistress Duenda’s house.  Clarimond and Joan already started filling chests.”  He offered Ballard a grim smile.  “Cinnia will be a rich widow, with plenty left over for the others.”

Ballard motioned for Gavin to follow him as he returned to his bedchamber for his cloak.  “As long as Louvaen can keep her father from wasting every last coin on risky ventures.”

“I doubt she’ll let that happen again.”

Ballard prayed he was right.  He reached for his finest cloak, a garment made of oil-tanned leather so soft and supple it flowed over his hand like velvet.

“Leave the cloak.  Come down as you are.”  Gavin tried to pull the cloak out of Ballard’s resisting grasp.  “We’re your family,” he said.  “You don’t have to hide from us.”

Ballard wrested the garment back and tossed it over his shoulders.  “Louvaen will murder me, as will Cinnia,” he joked.  “I’d have a lot to answer for if everyone gawked at me instead of your bride on her wedding day.  The cloak stays on.”

Gavin sighed.  “Then come down to the kitchens and share a flagon of wine with me.  I’ve a virgin to gentle in my bed tonight.”  His eyebrows wiggled playfully.  “I could use a dram or six.”

Ballard strode out of the bedchamber.  “I’ll take a sea monster over a virgin any day.  You’ll need something a lot stronger than wine.”

They found themselves alone in a kitchen saturated with the scents of freshly baked bread, saffron and cinnamon.  Gavin opened one of the cupboard doors, revealing a towel-covered platter.  He peeked beneath the cloth and whistled.  “I think Magda is the magician here, not Ambrose.  She’s made fig pies for the celebration.”

Ballard sat down in his customary seat at the table.  “She’ll split you from gullet to navel if you thieve so much as a crumb off that plate.  Go get us the wine you promised.”

Gavin grinned and left for the buttery.  He returned with a full pitcher and two goblets.  Ballard poured, and the two men toasted each other before quaffing the first cup.

Ballard savored the time with his son, this layered camaraderie existing not only between parent and child but between two battle-weary fighters who faced a common enemy and soon a common end.  He wished he might face the last alone.

They made small talk between them, Ballard recounting tales of the various weddings he’d been forced to attend for reasons of courtesy and politics.  “I’m surprised I remember half of them,” he said.  “I was cupshot through most of those celebrations.  So was everyone else.”

Gavin refilled their goblets a fourth time.  “It isn’t a wedding if you can’t empty the host’s stock of wine and ale in an evening.”

Ambrose discovered them a few minutes later.  He eyed the pitcher and pulled a third goblet from one of Magda’s many cupboards.  “Tell me there’s a little more.  I’ve just escaped a flock of harpies.”

Ballard blinked.  “You went to the bower?  Were you looking to die?”  He’d faced armies populated with berserkers without flinching; he wouldn’t dare approach a bride’s bower before the wedding.

The sorcerer swelled up like an adder.  “I was in the hallway making my way to the stairs and minding my own business.  Magda lured me into that death trap with a sweet smile.”

Gavin choked on his wine.  A hard thump across the back from his father, and he cleared his throat.  “That should have been your first warning,” he said between gasps of wheezy laughter.

Ambrose poured the last of the wine into his cup and drained it to the dregs.  He smirked at the two men.  “Well here’s a warning from the grand demoness herself: be in the great hall by the time Cinnia reaches the mezzanine, and you better be able to stand without swaying.”

Gavin’s face paled.  He jerked up from his seat and swayed.  Ballard and Ambrose groaned in unison.  “I’m not drunk,” he assured them.

Ambrose slid a glance to Ballard who shrugged.  “He shouldn’t be.  It was just one flagon split between us.”  He smiled wryly at his son.  “I’d say you’re suffering from wedding terrors.”

Gavin nodded and gripped the table’s edge so hard his fingernails turned white.

“Are you sure you want to do this, boy?”  Ambrose stared at him warily.  “I’ll brave the pit of damnation up there if you want me to deliver a different message.”

Gavin gave another fervent nod.  “I’m sure.  I love Cinnia and want nothing more than to make her my wife.”

Ballard rose, refusing to dwell on the fantasy of being in Gavin’s place, preparing to wed Louvaen.  “Let’s go,” he said and nudged Gavin toward the great hall.  “You don’t want to keep them waiting and raise Magda’s ire.”

They entered the hall where a small portion had been sectioned off for the ceremony.  Two chairs covered in ells of costly dosser faced each other.  The rich fabric shimmered in the candle and torchlight, turning the serviceable chairs into seats suitable for royalty.  A veil of fine transparent lawn had been erected between them, the symbolic barrier separating bride from bridegroom before they were declared married.

As the officiant, Ambrose took his place in front of the chairs.  Ballard nudged Gavin toward the one on his right.  “Remember, don’t sit until Ambrose says so.”  His son was still pale as a wraith.  “And don’t swoon.”

He smiled when Gavin rounded on him, frowning.  “I’m not some milksop woman, Father.”

Ambrose sniffed.  “Ketach Tor certainly doesn’t house an overabundance of those.”

A door opened and closed above them.  Ballard tracked the small entourage of women as they made their way down the last flight of stairs.  Except for Cinnia, each woman had donned the same garments they’d worn for Modrnicht.  They were doves instead of buntings and finches to his eyes now—sporting shades of gray in their skirts and ribbons.  The bride wore a flowing gown embroidered in glittering thread—an acquisition from one of Gavin’s forays into the world beyond Ketach Tor.  The intricate embroidery reflected the light, seeming to undulate across the gown’s hem and draping sleeves.  Cinnia’s features, as sublime as the dawn, broke into a wide smile when she saw Gavin.

Ballard’s gaze rested on Louvaen, dressed in the gown he remembered as red.  He’d freed her from it an eternity ago in the sensuous quiet of his bedchamber.  Maybe tonight she’d allow him to help her a second time.  She returned his stare with a brief frown, and he caught the flash of annoyance in her eyes.  She didn’t like him wearing the cloak and hood anymore than Gavin did.

Once they reached the chairs, Ambrose bade Gavin and Cinnia to sit on either side of the veil with their hands clasped together below it.  The ceremony itself was a simple one—the wrapping of velvet cord over the couple’s hands with assurances from the bride and groom that they entered the union willingly and vows exchanged of love, fidelity and loyalty.

Ambrose invoked a prayer of good fortune and long life over the two, and Ballard tried not to flinch.  He looked to Louvaen who watched her sister, pale skin drawn tight against her facial bones, a faint smile hovering around her mouth.

He silently repeated the sorcerer’s words as Ambrose pulled away the veil and recited the last prayer.  “Thus no longer divided.  I recommend unto thee a man with a wife and a woman with a husband.  Happy is the place upon which a holy man builds a house, with fire and cattle, wife and children and good followers.”

They were ardent words uttered for so long by ascetics and celebrants that they’d become rote.  Ballard had only half listened to them when he married Isabeau.  All had been lies in that union.  Some were still lies in this one, but not from lack of effort by the married couple.  Given a chance and a future, they might have fulfilled every part of the prayer.

Gavin helped Cinnia to her feet, enfolding her in his arms for a passionate kiss.  There was cheering and applause amongst the witnesses, along with sniffles and hastily wiped tears from Louvaen and Magda.

Ballard pulled Gavin into a hard embrace, forcing a grunt from the younger man.  “You’re truly shackled now, boy.”

Gavin grinned and nestled Cinnia into his side.  “In the best way, Father.”

Custom dictated that Ballard embrace his son’s new wife as well and kiss her cheeks as part of his welcoming her to his household.  He offered her a respectful bow instead.  “Welcome to the House of Ketach, Lady de Lovet.”

She blushed and curtsied in return.  “Thank you, Lord de Sauveterre.”

Both men watched as she went to Louvaen.  The two women hugged.  Cinnia burst into tears, prompting Louvaen to hush her and pass her a handkerchief.  Gavin started forward, his formerly ecstatic expression dissolved into outright fear.

Ballard halted him with a hand on his arm.  “Leave her be, son.  She isn’t regretting your union; she’s just snipping the last lead string from her sister’s apron.”

They waited for the women to finish their conversation.  Ballard stood easily next to Gavin who, despite his father’s assurances, remained tense and uneasy at Cinnia’s tears.  His knees visibly buckled with relief when she returned to him, still sniffling but smiling happily at him.

Ballard left them to receive congratulations from the others and sought out Louvaen who now stood alone to one side.  She turned to him, watery-eyed.  “I’m not crying,” she said.  “The rushes need to be thrown out.  They’re full of dust.”

Ballard played along.  “Magda’s housekeeping has slackened, though I understand she’s made fig pies.”