Linda Needham (22 page)

To be the man who claimed her and her love and all of her cares.

She sighed against his mouth and called out his name when he found her with his fingers, opened herself to him, her eyes half-lidded and following his.

“Be with me, Alex.” She wrapped her legs around his waist and tucked him closer, the tip of
him meeting her, unerringly, the way she’d found his heart.

“Oh, my love.” He shuddered with the need to plunge forward and plunder her, but he held back, slowing against the irresistible tide.

But Talia seemed as eager as he, tilting her hips and holding his, taking the tip of him as far as she could, until he met her maiden’s barrier.

She laughed with her eyes, tears glinting at their corners. “Make me yours, Alex, make me believe, for all the rest of my days.” And all the while she was rocking in her steady rhythm, her heartbeat and his.

“And be my wife, Talia.” Then, like a man with a single feral thought, he thrust in and upward, breaching her swiftly, the pleasure fragile and fierce as she took him tightly inside her, more deeply, more fully with each cry of his name, and he was buried to the shank.

He kissed her eyelids, then stilled completely, terrified that he’d hurt her. But she wore her fox’s sly smile, was stretching languidly beneath him, a riverweed, a willow, breathing deeply, her eyes alight with pleasure.

“You’re very large, Alex.”

“I can leave you, love.”

She tightened her heels against his buttocks. “No, you can’t.”

His heart gave a thudding leap. “Vixen.”

“My wild stallion.” She ran her fingers through
his hair, kept hold at his nape, then began that earthy rhythm again.

He met her long, measuring strokes, keeping her close to him, his weight sheltered on his elbows.

And they rocked. Lingered.

“Are we dallying, Alex?”

“As we will every night of our lives.” There was nothing left of his restraint, all of it spent on Talia, because he loved her more than his life.

He slipped his hand along her hip to her belly, found where she was wet and ready for him, where they were one.

A simple touch where she was the warmest, then her sigh caught against his chin and became a lingering, throaty, “Ohhhhh, mmmmy! My Alex!”

Her Alex. Could a man be happier?

Alex rode the full, fathoms deep force of her pleasure, holding back his own until it finally came roaring out of nowhere.

“God, I love you, Talia.”

Talia felt every inch of him, soared alongside him into the clearest, starriest part of the sky, unable to get enough of him, riding his glorious rhythms, until her marvelous Alex reared up, his nostrils flaring and full, the magnificent thickness of him arching within her.

He kissed her madly, the deep pulsing of him lifting her again toward another release, until he
bellowed her name and spilled his seed into her, flooding her with his life.

Her great, handsome, wild-haired beast. Her magnificent warlord, falling back to earth, his heart thudding against her chest as she soothed him, as she wept.

“I love you, Alex.” She kissed his cheek, where he tasted of salt and their lovemaking, lifted his damp hair off his forehead.

He looked sated, sloe-eyed. Cocky as he brushed a kiss across her mouth. “And I you, my love.”

She’d remembered something that she’d meant to ask him so long ago, a plaguing question she’d have asked him at supper if he’d been there. But then she’d found him lounging in her chamber.

And her life had changed. At least she hoped it had. One last chance to save them all. “About your counsel with the king.”

“God save me from kings and their ministers.” His eyes darkened as he shifted onto his elbow.

“What did you learn of Stephen’s spring campaign?”

He shifted his eyes from hers. “Ah, love. That.”

She wiggled out from under him, sat up on her knees, searching Alex’s face for any sign of hope that things might turn out well. “What happened in there, Alex?”

“Carrisford is in a strategic position.”

She shook her head, wanting to disbelieve the inescapable truth. “Strategic, in what way?”

“I’m sorry, my love, but it’s a factor of armies and alliances.”

“And not a single thought toward the people who live in the village. I should have taken the king there to show him.”

“Sweet, I think he knows.” He caught her hand in his, but she yanked it away.

“As you do as well, Alex, and yet you both can continue this—”

“We have little choice, Talia. Stephen especially. The moment he lets down his guard, Maud and her rebels are on his flanks.”

“So what you’re saying, Alex, is that the war is coming to my valley and there’s nothing you can do to protect my people, my family.” She shivered, held back a crippling sob.

“And
mine
, now, Talia. From this day onward.” He lifted the edge of the counterpane and draped it over her shoulders. “The castle garrison will—”

“Will be busy, won’t they? Protecting the castle, the king’s interests. Yours.”

“
Our
interests, Talia.” He lifted her chin with his bent knuckle and made her look into his eyes. So honest and determined that she wanted to weep. “Yours and mine. Stephen is sending troops and arms and cavalry.”

“Dear God!” She swallowed hard and drew the
counterpane around her. “So there’s no hope for any kind of peace.”

“There’s plenty of it between you and me, my love.” He slipped his hand beneath the blanket and around her waist. “Oceans of it. I’ve a strong, loyal garrison, who’ve pledged themselves to me—and thereby to you.”

How could a powerful warrior be such an innocent? “Oh, Alex, I wish—”

“Believe in me, love.” She wanted to believe in him. That would be plenty enough. He stopped her wish with another ravishing kiss, softly, slowly. Then, rising up on his knees, he lifted her fingers to his lips and gazed at her through his sooty lashes.

“Marry me, Talia.” He was waiting for her answer, this very impatient man whose heart she would eventually break. Whether now or in a few days didn’t matter.

She offered a smile to him and a prayer to the mother of all women that she would understand why she had to deceive the man she adored.

“On one condition.”

He sat up, grinning like a madman, one eyebrow cocked. “Does that mean yes?”

“It means on one condition, Alex.”

He caught her chin, planted a smiling kiss on her nose. “Your wish is my greatest pleasure, my love.”

And her greatest regret.

“Well, my mother and father were married at the market cross in the village…”

An awful lie; they were married in the chapel. But this wedding-that-would-never-be was the perfect excuse for emptying the castle, from battlement to cellar, so that no one would be hurt when she set her home and all of his dreams ablaze.

“And?” he asked, so sweetly impatient that tears sprang to her eyes.

“I’d like us to be married there, too.”

He smiled. “Consider it done. Is tomorrow morning too soon?”

“Two days.” That would be enough time to prepare the castle for its end.

“I’ll be aching for you by then, my love. As I am now.”

He carried her up onto his lap, the counterpane making a tent around them. She gladly took him inside her again, rocked with him, rode her magnificent steed until he was roaring out her name and holding her as though he’d never let go.

“I love you, Alex.”

Now, and for all the nights that are never to be.

“A
mighty fine day for a wedding, my lord.”

“Aye, it is, Father John,” Alex said, glancing up at the castle for the hundredth time, surprised at the churning in his guts, that he’d be subject to the simple vagaries of his wedding day. The pleasure of it, the anticipation. The beginning of his life with his love.

The sky glowed azure, and the sun was remarkably warm for nearly November. The village was thronged with people, everyone but the few guards he’d left in the main gatehouse. All waiting for the wedding to begin.

Waiting for Talia. A lady worth waiting a lifetime for.

“You’re looking like a merry bridegroom, my
lord,” Leod said. “Not a bit nervous, I’m sure?”

“Only that Talia might change her mind.” Alex had only been jesting, but couldn’t help noticing Quigley’s quick frown—the look he shot to Leod and Leod’s belly laugh.

“Ah, now, the lady Talia wouldn’t go changing her mind about you, my lord. Not on your life. Never met a man so worthy, nor seen our girl so in love.”

Quigley looked overwhelmed, pleading. “You’ll remember that always, won’t you, my lord? No matter what. That she loves you more than you’ll ever know.”

No matter what
.

Quigley’s encouragement should have comforted him, instead it made him look again toward the battlements, his banner flying there.

Something had been missing all through the day, like birdsong, or the breeze off the bay.

The girls.

“Where are Brenna and the girls?”

Quigley and Leod shook their heads at each other, then Quigley brightened, and said broadly, “With Her Ladyship. Helping her with her primping, I expect. You know how it is with the ladies.”

“Especially on a young woman’s wedding day.”

Aye, he knew well how it was with his lady. Organized down to the tiniest detail, even this hurried wedding of theirs.

With cider and ale enough for the celebration, the cross decorated with greenery and ribbons.

And her bride bed as well.

Their marriage bed.

He’d come upon her draping fresh garlands this morning, and weeping as she did. She’d bawled like a babe when she saw him, filling his arms with her fragrant embrace and covering his mouth with her kisses.

“Go now, Alex,” she’d said, shoving him out of her chamber and into the tower stairwell. “’Tis unlucky for us to see each other before the wedding.”

“Ah, love, I’ve never felt more lucky in all my life.” He’d kissed her once again, and then he’d idled away the rest of the morning.

And now he was idling away his wedding day under the watchful eyes of Quigley and Leod.

Like a pair of dogged nursemaids.

Or guards.

His hackles rose, a sharp prickling, a soldier’s warning that he had never in his life dismissed.

“Ah, good! There’s Dougal,” he said, pointing into the most dense part of the crowd. “I’ve a favor to ask of him. Watch for my lady, will you?”

When neither of the old men followed, Alex wondered if he’d been overreacting.

Then he decided to go hurry the woman on his own, bad luck or no.

“Will you be all right, my lady?”

Jasper must have seen Talia’s hands shaking even in the dimness of the cellar, and she loved him for asking, for caring. “As right as I need to be.”

“Well, the girls are safe out at the limeworks.”

“And Alex is waiting down there in the village for me to come marry him.”

Jasper rubbed his knuckles across her cheek, the way he’d done for all her life. “I’m sorry to my soul that it had to be this way, my dear girl. He did turn out to be the best of them, didn’t he?”

“Lord, yes, Jasper.” She caught a sob in her chest and blinked back her tears. “But it’s time. Wait here for my signal. And then we’ll clear the guardhouse of the watchmen and be done with it.”

She kissed him on his cheek and left the cellar so he wouldn’t see her weeping.

She dodged through the silent, utterly empty courtyard, reached the family quarters, and stumbled down the stairs into the cellar, scrubbing tears from her eyes.

The round room smelled of wool and linseed and the bristling pile of kindling leaning against the timber post in the center. And the rushlight she’d left waiting for her.

Oh, what a terrible price she was exacting from the man she loved.

Who loved her, and her family, and who would have been a fine steward for Carrisford if it hadn’t been for Stephen’s war with his cousin.

Mother Mary, protect us all.

Talia picked up the rushlight, steadied her hand to keep the flame upright and was just bending down to the sacks of wool and linseed oil when she felt a warm, familiar shadow cross her shoulders.

She knew whose it was by his scent and his size and the heartbreaking sound of him.

“What are you doing, Talia?”

She set the pale rushlight down on a chest, scrambling for some suitable lie as she turned toward him.

Toward his stark silhouette on the bottom step, limned by the spill of afternoon light that should have bathed their wedding celebration.

“Well, Alex, I’m…looking for”—something for the wedding—“an oyster-shell clip for my hair. Somewhere here in one of my mother’s coffers.”

“Ah.” The air stilled, cooled like a tomb, before he stepped into the circle of rushlight, huge in his quiet fury, flinty as the winter.

“I wanted to wear it…the clip—”

“At our wedding, I vow?” His voice came from somewhere she’d heard before, bitter and cold.

“Well, yes, I was hoping to wear something of my mother’s. A sudden need to feel her close to me.”

He stepped into the center of the room, almost too tall for its ceiling, his gaze sliding efficiently
over everything, missing nothing. He looked so very fine in his wedding clothes, all leather and velvet and shiny gold buckles.

“Taking your time preparing for our nuptials, I see.”

She swallow hard, breathless. “Yes.”

“I thought you might want to know that the market square is full to bursting with our well-wishers.” He paused overlong. “Friends and family, Talia.”

There was nothing but lies and emptiness left between them, because no matter what happened now, she couldn’t stay, could hardly breathe for fear of sobbing.

But she let out a frivolous sigh, and he turned his broad back to her. She reached out to touch him, felt the heat and brought her hand back.

“I’m sorry I kept you waiting, my love,” she said, as blithely as she could manage. “Wedding day nerves, I guess. I…well, I just lost track of time, that’s all. But if you’ll hurry back to the village and let Father John know that I’ll be right there—”

“Christ, stop it, Talia.” He whirled on her, his eyes piercing, as brittle as glass. “Please. Before you dig yourself an even deeper hole.”

She’d never seen him so angry, could only stammer and try to stall his inevitable hatred of her. “Well, I…I don’t know what you mean.”

A hard-edged muscle moved in his jaw, his bronze skin clean-shaven for his wedding day. So soft it would be to touch. “Tell me what you’re doing down here.”

It wasn’t his anger that she regretted, but the cold, unrelenting disappointment in his eyes. He was waiting for her to answer him, his chest rising and falling in his tightly tethered wrath.

“Alex, I—” Her stomach churned; her heart tattered and aching. “This is a storage cellar. My mother’s things are here….”

“I know the signs of sabotage, madam.” He grabbed up a bundle of sticks. “You’ve made this place a tinderbox. Linseed and wool sacks and wood.”

“I told you wh—”

“I’m not a fool,” he hissed, tossing the bundle aside.

“I’m painfully aware of that, Alex.” And so painfully in love with him.

And yet she couldn’t think of any elaboration at all, not with the naked truth laid out before them, not with him bearing down on her, brimstone seeping from his every seam.

“You were just about to set fire to this cellar, weren’t you, Talia?” He caught her back against the center pole, trapped her firmly there with his bent thigh against hers. “It’s been your plan all along.”

“Alex, I didn’t—”

“Christ, Talia, don’t bother trying any of your pretty falsehoods on me, I know them all, and I’m sick to death of them.”

Resentment and outrage went off like rockets inside her, sizzled down her spine. She grabbed hold of the front of his tunic and pulled him close.

“And I am sick to death of your wars and the devastation you bring. Tired of hiding my family and sending innocent villagers to the woods to save their lives. Tired of running just ahead of the next horror.”

“And so your answer is deception? To leave me waiting to marry you in the village like a fool, while you set my castle ablaze?”

“It’s
mine
, Alex!”

“Damnation, woman!” He reached behind her, cradled her head against the post for all his anger, and leaned as close as the kiss he’d given her that morning. “And I’m supposed to do what, Talia? To just stand back and allow it? Allow you to raze a castle I hold in wardship to the king?”

“I don’t care about the king.”

“Or about me?”

“Oh, I…Alex, you couldn’t possibly understand.”

“I understand that you made a promise to me the night we made love.” He touched his mouth against her temple, breathing deeply—a dear inti
macy that she moaned against, a richly scented memory of him that swept her along with the slamming of his heart. “The night you told me that you would be my wife. That you loved me. Do you even remember it?”

“Indelibly, Alex.” Burned into her heart. “I promised you that I would come to you whenever I saw problems with Carrisford.”

“And you promised this because…?”

“Because I love you.”

“A hell of a sobering thought, Talia. That you can love me and still burn down my castle. God knows what you’d have done if you’d taken a dislike to me.”

“This has nothing at all to do with you and me, Alex. I should have done this years ago long before Aymon or Rufus.”

“Or me?” His eyes glittered with molten fury, were red-rimmed and wounded. “Do I so remind you of them? Do I disgust you so much that you’d burn me out, Talia, just to spite me?”

“I would never do that, Alex. Please believe me, I had no choice. I haven’t for a long time.”

“You’re right there, madam.” He snatched the rushlight by its flame, unflinching as he crushed its brightness inside his palm. “You’ve made your last choice.”

He grabbed her wrist and started up the stairs.

“Where are you taking me? To your dungeon?”
She hunkered down and dragged her heels, but he merely scooped her up like a sack of grain.

“You can’t stop me, Alex. Not unless you lock me up or hang me.”

“The court of law is the king’s business, madam. This is mine.”

Alex could barely manage his temper at the moment, could barely see for the blackness of his anger.

He felt like a damned fool, had gone in search of his beloved, expecting to find her still at her toilette, surrounded by the girls.

Her chamber alive with flowers and giggling and those damn rabbits.

He’d expected to wed her at the foot of their castle and bed her and make children with her and love her until the end of time.

Yet, all the while she’d been plotting her intricate betrayal of him. She was very good at it. Masquerading all this with her beguiling smile.

Destroying the very things she loved.

Carrisford.

Me.

Holy hell. He shoved open the door to his chamber, and stood her on her feet, then slammed the door behind them.

He wanted most of all to let go of her and walk away, but her eyes were wide and weepy, and his heart was slamming against his ribs.

And she smelled of the day that should have
been theirs, of leafy garlands and weddings, the spicy scent of apples caught up in the curls at her temple.

He wanted her as he wanted air. “Dammit, Talia, do you know what I gave up for you?”

She gave an angry little stamp and swabbed her sleeve across her eyes. “You gave up nothing more than you wanted to give up, Alex.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“That you are the same man, in the same place, that you were when you came storming through my gates and into my heart. And now you’re free again to do anything you’d like.”

He opened his mouth to deny her, grasping at any hint of logic, feeling selfish and shallow even before the words left his mouth.

Because none of it seemed like Talia.

“You knew what I wanted for my life, madam. Knew exactly why I didn’t want to stay here with you.”

“Well, good. Now you don’t have to stay; you have your excuse. I’m sure there’s an heiress out there somewhere for you. One far better for your purposes than I am. A far less troublesome castle to seize. I’ll be hanged and you can have your perfect future.”

A coldness settled over his shoulders, the prospect of life without Talia. “Christ, Talia, how long have you been conspiring to bring it down?”

“I wasn’t conspiring, Alex. Carrisford is my birthright, I can do whatever I think best with it.”

“And so you’d burn it down? When I’d promise on my life that I would protect you.”

“But you can’t possibly, Alex. Not even you.” She was sobbing softly, scrubbing the streaming of tears from her cheeks. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you. You can’t know how much I love you.”

So that’s what Jasper had meant: a subtle warning from one of her confederates. To beware, to believe, to trust where he shouldn’t.

Where he could not.

He whirled away from her so that he couldn’t see her tears, because they looked so real, dredged up from her deepest sorrows. He braced his hands against the cool sandstone near the window, wondering how he could have been so blinded.

“I suppose Jasper is out there somewhere, ready to fulfill his part in your little plan. Shall I send someone to stop him before he starts a conflagration?”

“No. There’s no one but me.”

Finally, the answer he’d been expecting—and yet something deep inside of him knew that there was something dreadfully wrong. This was Talia, taking all the blame, protecting the people she loved no matter the cost.