Lady Merry's Dashing Champion (19 page)

Which she had not been allowed to view.

But had.

Giles slid into the bed, parting her legs, and she quickly gave up all thought of ancient art. He bent to her breasts, kissing them, holding them like cherished heirlooms, relishing, licking greedily, taking the perfect white orbs into his mouth until he could consume no more. He dragged his mouth up to her neck, thinking it the most stunningly beautiful neck he had ever seen.

And she tasted a bit like the sea with a freshening southerly breeze blowing from on shore. Clean, salty and with the scent of mint—and wild onions?—rising to fill his nostrils.

Lifting his mouth, he stared down at her, pausing to breathe, and saw what he would never forget. The moon now high in the windows, beams spread thin by thick glass to give her curving body a soft, wavering glow, adding moonlight to her black hair spread upon the scarlet silken pillow. She was the most beautiful creature he had ever known, a Lorelei singing a song to lure him upon the rocks. No mortal man could resist what he was seeing and tasting. At that moment he forgave himself for wanting all of her.

Meriel raised her head to reach his mouth. "Kiss me hard, Giles," she said, her voice husky and a little demanding. "Don't stop kissing me, not even if I ask you to stop. And I won't." She wanted all of him this way once, just once, and then she would face the whole poxy Dutch navy single-handed.

There was amazement mixed with her need for him. He was between her legs. She was begging. "Please, Giles, I want you. I need to have—" She stopped, not wanting to sound like a common back-alley whore. What did wives say to husbands? She couldn't think if she'd ever heard; she could only feel, and what she was feeling was Giles with his cod moving back and forth, torturing her woman's place. He was kissing her everywhere, eyes, lips, throat, the nipples on her breasts that were so erect they ached. She surged against him, beseeching without words. In truth, he would send her all crazed to Bedlam if he did not take her. Now! This minute.

But Giles was at that instant exerting stern control over his own pounding heart. This was not what he had planned. His plan had not included this roaring need to give himself completely as he took her, to show her his searing desire, thus becoming her slave. But his cock ruled tonight and it was an uncompromising master.

Still, that was not the sum of these feelings. Strangely, Felice was a more loving wife beneath him tonight than she had ever been. He was too heated, too full and hard to think of all the ways in which he now found her to be witty and brave and even more lovely ...

Have a care!
Giles told himself firmly. But he could not rule his emotions. She was arching against him, grasping his cod with her hand, demanding him and, God of blessed name, he could no longer think at all.

"Giles! Please, please!" It was a demand, a scream of need to surprise Meriel's own ears. She had thought herself a woman before tonight and been wrong. Giles awakened a fire that had its spark from her very soul.

She raised her hips higher and felt Giles lift her legs to wrap around his buttocks, an image of their tightly muscled contours on the ship's ladder leaping to her mind and remaining there.

She pulled him into her as he pushed, both, for once, in perfect agreement.

Meriel would not have thought it possible that anything could increase her desire, but as he entered, driving deeper, then deeper still, a molten heat rampaged through her limbs.

She heard her own voice, but could not understand the words she cried. They were foreign to her ears and, she feared, most embarrassing. Was she begging for more? Challenging him?

Giles's had held himself back for so long, he feared to hurt her with a cod as strong as Spanish steel. And she was crying something that he couldn't understand, except that he was urged on by the sound. He took her with fierce thrusts and they dropped into a wet trough between stormy waves, then rose up to ride the crest and down the other side, over and over, meeting each wild swell with equal rhythm.

When the storm broke over them, it was violent, like lightning flashing, thunder crashing down from the top of the world, and they held each other for a long moment, floating together, until at last they lay exhausted on their silken beach.

"Oh, Giles, my only lord—" She had finally come to a place of lassitude, unable to lift a limb, but remembering Cervantes's words, which she whispered: "Love—truly there is no force able to resist it."

Giles had fought his hunger for this woman who had betrayed him. Now, finally the hunger had won. "We begin anew this night, Merry," he whispered.

He paused, his lips brushing her shoulder. "Merry," he repeated, as if it had always been the name in his heart.

The following morning, Meriel awoke but did not open her eyes, wanting to hold on to the dream that she knew had been no dream this time. She stretched her arms and legs and found them amazingly light, as if they were floating. Stretching farther to reach Giles, she realized that he had gone. In the depression left by his head on their scarlet pillow lay a perfect white rosebud with dew still sparkling on its tight petals, all pricking thorns stripped away.

Her heart quickened at the thought that he had come back from his garden to silently bring her this gift and stare down at her while she slept. She pressed a hand to her throat, caught her breath and sneezed.

Roses and onions and mint; such was her life. She reached for her pocket hidden under the pillow and tipped four drops of the doctor's tincture under her tongue, quickly followed by a lozenge.

Still she could not put the rose from her, since it had last been touched by Giles. Perhaps he'd left a kiss on it.

Since she dare not smell it, she shook the dew onto her fingers and sucked them, and discovered her lips were swollen. And her breasts were tender to her touch. More, there was an aching emptiness below her belly. She smiled. Wasn't this the logical outcome for a woman who had been thoroughly loved by a man, a lover born to pleasure a woman, an artist with his hands and mouth; indeed, a man who was in no doubt about what to do with his manly part in the bedchamber?

She pulled aside the heavy tapestry bed curtains to find the sun streaming in.

A dozing maid sprang from a chair. "M'lady, how may I serve ye?"

"With sunshine and roses." Meriel smiled, wriggling lazily, reaching for her undershift, which peeked from under the coverlet where it had been wantonly discarded and forgotten. "Have you ever seen such a glorious morning?" she asked the astonished maid.

The young servant blinked and then stared as if she couldn't believe her eyes.

Was a naked mistress so uncommon a sight in this room? Meriel hoped that this was so with all her heart, wanting to believe just for the moment that last night had been the first night of love for Giles as it had been for her. She told herself she was being an idiot. Then she told herself again without really believing it.

The maid approached tentatively.

"Warm water for washing would be won-der-ful," Meriel said, drawing out the word, toying with it, rolling the sound of it on her tongue. The maid ran from the room as if she'd seen the devil's mark. Obviously, a happy and satisfied mistress was an eerie apparition in Harringdon Hall.

Meriel, slipping into her shift for modesty's sake, ran to the leaded glass window and opened it. All windows were closed at night to keep out the noxious vapors formed in the dark, but in the fresh morning air what could be the harm? And she needed to breathe in as much of Harringdon Hall as she could hold.

Giles, in rolled-up shirtsleeves, was below on a greensward enclosed in high, perfectly cropped yew hedges, engaged with another man in practicing with a flashing rapier around the edges of a rectangular pond. It was a handsome space, ordered and closely tended, yet with spring wildflowers allowed to grow in abandon amongst its grasses. All framed the master who had made it.

Meriel bit her lower lip to remind herself that this was the same untamed man who had pressed his body ... indeed, every part.. . upon her most urgently just a few hours earlier.

She watched Giles bound forward, aggressively slashing his rapier as with a broadsword, then pivot and step back, parrying with great style. She had to applaud. He looked up, and his opponent, seeing opportunity, sent the earl's weapon flying from his hand and into the pond. Giles bowed, slapped the fellow's back and roared with laughter.

She waved, smiling down at Giles, her two men in one: the artistic earl who had planned such a simple but elegant garden, and the fierce lover who had conquered her. She had first desired him as a distant hero; now she adored him as a man, especially when he laughed. Had he laughed so with Felice? No, impossible.

"Merry, break your fast quickly and join me for a morning walk. There is a place I want to show to you," he called, holding his arms wide as if to embrace all of her and Harringdon Hall together. Then he jumped into the pond to retrieve his rapier, emerging with his wet shirt and breeches clinging to him. To his utter advantage.

"My lord, you will take a chill."

He grinned up at her and squinted against the morning sun, brushing away the dark, wet hair clinging to his cheek. "After last night, my lady, I doubt I shall ever feel cold again."

She blushed and moved back inside, but not before she heard him shout for her to hurry her toilette. Which she did with no further urging.

In the great hall at the head of a double line of servants holding various items, Giles waited in dry shirt and black breeches with highly polished, red Spanish boots turned down at the knee. He watched her descend the wide stairs with eyes that devoured every curve of her. She was dressed as a country maid in a gown of fine gauzy lawn, much embroidered and beribboned, a shepherdess in want of a crook to complete the picture. And exposing finer ankles than he remembered. Her black hair was free and tumbling about her shoulders, held back by a scarlet ribbon, as if she had never heard of formal court styles. He thought she could charm the cows away from the tender spring grass, the bees away from their flowers and the ewes away from their lambs. He bent to kiss her hand, then turned it over and kissed her palm most thoroughly. "Utterly charming, my lady," he whispered. "You grow younger and more beautiful by the hour."

When he began to slide his lips up to her wrist, she teased: "I thought we were to walk. Have you changed your mind?"

"My mind is not for changing, my lady, although I beg you not to tempt me lest I fail in that faint resolve." He took a deep breath and gathered himself, since he always felt somewhat off balance with his wife, especially of late. "But walk we will, Merry, and dine in the woods. The French call it a
pique-nique,
but I'll take good English fare under fine English oaks to any French bower," He swept his hand down the rows of servants, holding heaped cloth-covered hampers, a table, two chairs, and linen. Two men brought a virginal and its stand.

'Od's grace, did Felice play and sing? Meriel knew she could fake neither no better than fine court dances.
Hey, well, will I now have to sprain my hand and tongue both together?

Meriel stood on tiptoe to reach his ear. "Oh, my dearest lord, nothing so formal, if it please you. Could we not just send a food basket ahead and stroll together and alone? I would look into the parterre and at your rose garden."

He looked at her, astounded and delighted. "If you wish it, my shepherdess." This was, in truth, a strange new Felice, who had always expected that comfort follow her if she agreed to walk at all.

Meriel took the arm Giles offered, holding on tight lest the dream slip away, as all dreams must with waking and as this dream surely would before another day had gone. All too soon, she knew, the joyous pleasure of being loved would be a memory. Yet it was worth the risks she would soon take. Thus she determined to treasure every moment.

They walked through the great gothic arched entrance into the sparkling sun, saw a manservant off with the basket of food and wine, and turned down the carefully raked carriageway to the gardens. Along the sides of the road, workmen were lifting spent bulbs to repot and divide for the next year. Giles and Meriel strolled hand in hand round the hall to the main garden, past roses beginning to open full behind their carefully trimmed privet hedges. The beds were laid out in the most cunning geometric patterns with intersecting paths all leading to a center fountain. It was charming, a window into Giles's gentle soul. They continued on the wide central path to the far edge where two seedling trees stood ready to plant near a road.

"No," Giles said to an aproned gardener, reaching for the man's shovel. "I'll do this planting, John."

"Aye, sir."

Giles kissed Meriel's cheek, brushing his lips softly across her skin, then began to dig in the rich soil. "These are horse chestnuts, Merry," he said, soon reaching a proper depth. "They will grow and flower, arching high over this road and giving us shade long before we are old. I will plant a new one for each of our children on the day they are born until our family marches in an avenue down beside the hall."

Meriel's face convulsed and tears flowed down her cheeks. This lie was becoming hourly more unbearable. She struggled not to tell him the truth; she could not spoil his dream. Soon enough it would lie dead.

Giles tamped the dirt around the saplings before he looked up to see her tears. Wiping his hands on the grass, he came to her, taking her in his arms. "Sweet Merry, dry your eyes, for you are now the woman that I always knew you could be, and that is an occasion for joy, not tears." He pulled his shirt from his breeches, and smiling, gently wiped her face. "Come now, there is something I've never shown you."

They moved on toward the meadows. She threw back her head, closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath past a tremulous smile.

Once more, Giles looked on her in amazement, wondering why a kind God had given him at last the woman he had always wanted. Felice had hated his country estate and all his lands about, second only to her hatred of the sea. He had known her to be changed last night in the abandoned yet shy way she gave herself to him, but he had not expected so complete a turn in her character. This new Felice, this Merry as she now named herself... and what a true name it was! . .. loved this country air she breathed, full of animal and plant scents. If he had tutored a wizard to conjure a perfect wife, Merry would be the result. He could have no further doubt that the Lord of blessed name had intervened, for this woman was surely heaven-sent.