Lord of Midnight (26 page)

He would put that out of his mind, however, and control his own need. He must. The news couldn’t be delayed much longer. This was his last chance, his last chance to forge Claire to him in the heat of desire so that she could never break free, not even when the truth came out.

He heard her catch her breath, felt her sudden tension and summoned all his skills. He could read a woman—read her breathing, her subtle movements—as skillfully as Claire could read a book. He would use his skills to enslave her.

Doubts slammed him. Teasing her with his tongue, seeking what she liked the best, he fought them.

There was no other way.

No choice.

You could tell her
, whispered conscience.
You could tell her now, rather than binding her to you and waiting for the news to break. To break her
.

He rubbed his hard palm over her other breast. Heard her whisper, “Renald!” Felt her touch his hand as if to stop him, then stroke him, delicately, hesitantly.

Ah, Claire. Beautiful Claire. Responsive Claire with skin like silk and courage like fire.

We’re married. It’s already too late. But I can give her this.

You’re not giving. You’re taking.

He silenced his inner voices, raising his head to look at her, at her smiling, wondering face. She was already flushed. Already close to ready. She was going to be a wonderful lover.

A finger in her folds found hot wetness waiting for him. Her eyes widened a little at his touch, but her smile grew and she parted her thighs in eager welcome.

“Not yet,” he told her, stroking. “Not quite yet. With the best will, the first time is rarely perfect for a woman. Let me show you the good part first.”

He used his hand and the music of her body, and skills learned with too many women, to sweep her into pleasure, into more than pleasure. Blocking all thought of his own urgent desire, he stroked and teased the response he wanted until her body told him she was her the end.

She was silent. Some women were. He didn’t mind. Her face still spoke for her with frowns and gasps, and her body danced its message with her writhing hips. He drew it out, teased it out along a long, thin line of aching pleasure until she opened her eyes to plead, mutely, dazedly.

Triumphant, he released her, bringing the cry he’d worked for, the convulsion of ecstasy, the sobbing breaths as sweet as any tourney prize. He gave her his lips and received the violent kiss of total satisfaction.

What she thought was total satisfaction.

For now.

Her lids fluttered open and she laughed, dewy with sweat and rosy pink. “I didn’t know… Not like that.” Then she turned red at what she’d admitted.

He grinned. “Now you know why two is better than one.”

“But we haven’t… Have we?”

“No. But we will. Take a moment.”

“Why wait?”

“Because I want to.”

She looked at his erection. “Do I believe that?”

He chuckled with pleasure at her frankness. “Yes, my cock wants you now. But my head wants a whole new dance.”

“Why?” She reached for him and he seized her wrist.

“Don’t.” His body was asking the same question. Why? It had seemed a good idea a moment ago.

But he needed to be careful when he took her.

In control. A control that was slipping.

He clenched his teeth and thought of icy water instead of dewy, rosy skin, the sweet-spicy perfume of her body, and the hot cream just waiting…

“Margret said men like to have it touched, kissed. Sucked even.”

His body bucked its need.

“Is it as hot as it looks?”

Before he could seize control, before he could stop her again, she clasped him, stroked him—

His body convulsed in white-hot relief. His seed shot free. After a few groaning moments of sheer ecstasy, fury bit.

At himself for weakness.

At her for impulsiveness.

For wanton disobedience!

He rolled away to sit on the side of the bed, head sunk in hands. Eventually, he had to turn back. She was sitting cross-legged among crushed crimson petals, looking as if a barrel of ale had exploded in front of her. Which was probably close enough.

“I’m sorry,” she said, wide-eyed. “Did that hurt?”

“Only in the nicest way. But I was trying to save it for you.” At least she wasn’t in shock.

He went to get a damp cloth to clean himself, and brought another to her. She was already wiping some splashes off herself with a corner of the sheet.

“Are you upset by that?” he asked carefully as he offered her the cloth. Claire of Summerbourne was not the most predictable woman.

“No.” But she looked worried. “Is that it, though? Can we not… ?”

“Look at me and answer yourself.”

She looked and blushed. “I’m glad. I want to become your wife tonight.”

He laughed for relief and in simple delight at the jewel she was. “You will, Claire. Have no fear.”

“No fear,” she echoed and smiled so sweetly it could break his heart. “And to think that earlier I was afraid of you. Of it.”

He hadn’t really thought he had a breakable heart yet now there was a pain in his chest that could only come from that. “But having seen how easily it’s conquered…” he teased, fighting, God help him, not to weep.

From habit he picked up his scabbarded sword from beside the bed, checking that it hadn’t been splattered. When he glanced at her, she was staring at it.

“I always sleep with it by my hand, Claire.”

“It is a holy blade. It will bless us.” But she frowned.

“I’m sorry. I’ll put it out of sight.” Remembering the previous night, he slid the blade out a little to be sure there were no more tricks. It glinted dark and clean so he pushed it back and put it down a little farther back in a less obvious place, trying to come to terms with this new world. The world in which he loved Claire of Summerbourne. Claire—his wife, the woman he was tricking and deceiving because soon, very soon, she would have reason to hate him.

He’d snared and held and tricked and teased simply because he wanted her, and what he wanted he fought to have. What was the difference between wanting and love? He didn’t know except that there was, and it changed everything.

Just maybe, if he’d loved her sooner, he would have found the strength to let her go.

But the wheel had turned. There was nothing now but to go forward and pray. He turned to consider the sheet, whether it was too soiled for her comfort, and found her still frowning. “Claire, it would be foolish to keep my sword too far away. What if we were attacked in the night?”

“Why would we be?” she asked, but vaguely. “Someone said it cuts through metal. Through mail.”

Something in her tone, in the severity of her frown sent a splinter of icy dread into him. By all the saints, not yet. Not now. He put one knee on the bed and reached for her. “Let’s not talk of swords now, sweetheart.”

“Do most swords not?”

“Claire. We have better subjects—”

She slid from his reaching hand. “Do they not?”

He let his hand fall. “No. Most swords cannot cut through metal.”

“But there must be other swords like that.”

“Of course.” He didn’t try again to touch her.

“Then why was everyone so awestruck by it?”

“It contains the stone from Jerusalem.” He made himself meet her panicked, questioning eyes.

“They were even more astonished that it could cut through mail.” Her eyes fixed on him as if begging for something. “How many swords in England can do that?”

He knew then, and it settled like stone in his gut. He wished he could lie for her—for himself—but that was one step he would not take. “Just that one as best I know.”

She moved back a little farther. “My father was killed in chain mail. By a sword to the heart. The links were cut through.” She inched to the very edge of the bed. “Did that sword kill my father?”

After a moment she whispered, “Did
you—
No, it cannot be!”

The lie floated seductively to his lips. A temptation worthy of the snake in Eden. He could not be sure that he stopped it for honor’s sake, or simply because the news would come. Such a lie could not hold.

Pale and frantic, she scrambled backward off the bed. “Oh, Jesu, of course you did! Why else were you given his property, one of his women for bride?”

“Claire—”

“Why else were you given that sword! A reward… No.” She stared at him. “You had the sword before. Mail is supposed to protect from swords. You
cheated”
She came around the bed in fierce attack. “You
murdered
him!”

He backed away, hands raised. “Claire, listen to me—”

“How could you?” She seized the sword in both hands. “How could you bring this here? How could you face us with his blood on your hands? How
could
you… !”

When she seized the hilt as if she’d draw the weapon, he ripped it from her and tossed it to the far side of the bed.

She whirled to follow it and Renald saw what she saw—stained sheets, the blood of crushed roses, and the black-scabbarded blade. The room reeked of sex and roses, with a mismatched underlay of herbs and spices.

He wasn’t surprised when she bent to vomit.

He stood frozen. For once in his life, he had no idea how to handle a woman, especially this woman, the one he wanted to guard against all harshness forever. He’d always known he was forcing her to grasp a vicious blade and now the wound was clear.

His own blood ran.

There was nothing else he could have done. Just as there’d been nothing he could have done to save her father.

You could have told her the truth.

You could have let her escape.

It was, God help them both, too late for that.

The retching stopped and Claire wiped her face on a clean corner of the sheet. The earl’s words had started this. Think about your father, and mail, and swords, before you revel in the marriage bed. The earl hadn’t wanted her to marry Renald, hadn’t wanted her happy about it, because he’d known what a sin it was.

She had married her father’s killer! Not just a man who had killed him in the heat of battle, but one who had used a cheating weapon. A murderer.

Why, in God’s name, hadn’t the earl spoken directly? Why hadn’t he stopped her before this?

A sound made her twitch around to face her husband—her enemy—but he was simply pulling on his braies.

“I will have the marriage annulled,” she said.

“No.”

“You can’t stop me!”

He was cold granite again. “Of course I can.”

“You will rape me?” Despite the quiver inside she raised her chin. “Why did I think otherwise? Everything else you’ve said to me has been a lie.”

“Everything I’ve said to you has been the truth. Just not the whole truth. I will never rape you.”

She scrambled for her shift and pulled it on, pulled her kirtle over it, and her tunic. She wished she had a thick cloak to gather around herself for protection. “Then I will free myself of this marriage.”

“And fling your family into poverty?”

She turned. “You would do that?”

“Why not if you will not give me what I want?”

“How can you want a wife who hates you?”

“Only believe that I do.”

“A wife whose body you can never take without rape.”

His features were set like stone but his eyes betrayed him.

She remembered him earlier, laughing.

She remembered, with a bitter sense of loss, the tender way he had guided her into her womanly pleasure, the burning spiraling wonder of it all.

The tragedy here, she feared, was that he did indeed want her, and even more than want.

She closed her eyes briefly before speaking. “Renald, I know it must have been in battle. I don’t really blame you. You can’t have set out to kill him. But you must see I cannot—”

“It was not in battle, Claire. Or not as you mean it. And I did set out to kill him. It was a court battle. One on one.”

She stared. “A court battle?”

“Where a man proves his cause—”

“I know what a court battle is! How could my father have ended up in something like that?”

“By challenging the king’s right to the throne.”

Claire shook her head as if she could throw off the macabre picture. “And you were the king’s champion. You and he. What kind of contest was that?”

“None at all.”

She put her hands to her head, trying desperately to make sense of a shattered world. “And that sword! It wasn’t enough that you’re younger, bigger, stronger. That you’ve trained and trained from the day you were weaned. You had a sword that could cut through mail. You set out to kill him!”

She waited for denial. For excuses.

But he said, “Yes. He had to die.”

She backed away until a wall stopped her, and covered her face with her hands. Sweet Mary mild, why had this been put before her? When she’d accused him of murder, it had been a wild word. She’d been sure it had been a true battle death, not really anyone’s fault.

But it
had
been murder. Her father had been forced into a one-on-one fight with an opponent he could never defeat.

When she looked at Renald again, he was pulling on his tunic. It was over his head.

She ran for the door. She was through it and around the screen before he caught her in an iron-hard embrace.

The celebrating crowd fell slowly silent.

And in those moments, he whispered, “Don’t say a word, or your family will suffer.”

Still, the accusation swelled inside her.
This man coldbloodedly killed my father, and by treachery even. I renounce him
. But his threat, reinforced by his iron hold, held her silent for the crucial moments.

“My friends”—he spoke to the startled gathering, easing his arm so it must seem more like an embrace—“in my hurry to claim my bride, I overlooked her deep grief for her father.”

Claire twitched and his hold on her tightened ruthlessly.

“Though she has tried to be a dutiful wife, her grief comes between us and pleasure this night. Therefore, we have decided to delay our consummation. As the Church recommends, we have taken a vow of celibacy for the first month of our marriage. We offer it up for the good of Lord Clarence’s soul.”