LordoftheHunt (18 page)

It was the Roman goddess, Diana.

“Does she not look like you?” he asked. “It is how I see
you. You are my Diana, my huntress.”

He stood but a few feet behind her. As he spoke, he took her
candle.

“Your huntress?” she whispered, though no mortal man could
hear them.

“Aye.” He pulled his mantle from her shoulders and spread it
on the floor in the very center of the chamber. “It was your skill with the
hunting hounds that saved my life the first day we met.”

He undid his cross-garters. She put a hand to her heart. It
beat so rapidly, she thought it might leap from her chest.

Next, he drew off his tunic and the long linen shirt he wore
beneath it. She took a closer look at Diana so she could not see him strip off
the rest of his garments.

The candles sent wisps of smoke to the high blue ceiling.
Joan remembered that smoke was supposed to carry the prayers of the faithful to
heaven. She sent a prayer to the pagan Diana that she was not making a mistake
trusting this man.

And if it was a mistake? Why did she not flee down the
corridor and avoid these gut-twisting decisions?

Because she wanted to join him on his mantle and know the
touch of his hand again and the taste of his mouth.

“Come lie with me,” he said.

She knew what she would see when she turned around, but the
sight of him standing in the center of the chamber, his body lighted by the
blaze of candles, was magnificent.

He looked like a statue carved in marble, every muscle
delineated by light and shadow. He wanted her.

She drew off her loose overgown and let it fall from her
fingers to the floor. Her undergown and shift followed.

“Let down your hair,” he said.

She did as bid. Her hair felt like silk as it slid down her
back to brush her buttocks. Never had she been so aware of herself as she was
in that moment, the cool air on her skin, the sound of her breathing, the
scents of her body.

Anticipation of his touch puckered her nipples and sent
moisture to flood her insides. She understood its purpose now.

She stepped on the mantle. The fur lining caressed the soles
of her feet.

He settled his warm hands on her hips. “My Diana.”

“And who are you?”

Adam wondered how he should answer her question.
I am
Adam Quintin, a member of a company of men you hate.
Or I am Adrian de
Marle, son of a banished baron.
Making love to her felt dishonest under
either name.

He cocked his head and looked over at the mosaic. “I must be
the stag, for it is only he with whom Diana has spent the centuries.”

“And the stag bows down to the goddess,” Joan said.

Molten heat cascaded through his body as he knelt before
her. He pressed his lips to the soft skin of her belly.

She stroked his hair from his brow, and as he made the kiss
more intimate, her hips shifted—not away, but closer.

Kneeling as he was before her, aware of her near innocence
and how different she was from every woman he’d ever met, he knew he would not
trade all the silver pennies in his coffers for this one moment with her, this
tiny sliver of time, when he knew by taste, touch, and scent that she wanted
him as much as he wanted her.

Joan stood with her fingers entwined in Adam’s hair and
gasped for air, air scented by the dust of the ages and the heat of their
arousal. The touch of his fingertips, his lips, his tongue, drove sense away.
She wanted more.

When he urged her down on the mantle, she went willingly.

He entered her. She moved with him as if they had been
partners for as many centuries as this chamber had lain hidden.

She kissed his throat, now slick with the sweat of his
passion, and then sealed her mouth over his to possess every essence of him
from the salty moisture to the very breath of his lungs.

Then, as the stag stands poised before the hunter, he fell
still as stone. And like the stag who makes a final leap, the hard muscles of
his back, thighs, and arms tensed for the last, deep thrust.

She imagined she could feel every scalding drop of his seed
as it flowed into her.

It was not imagination that her body screamed for a repeat
of the rippling sensations she had experienced that morning. She thought that
like a hunter who has missed the stag with his final arrow, she might cry aloud
for wanting it.

He must have heard her silent plea or known all too well a
woman’s needs. He kissed down the length of her body. He kissed the inside of
her knee, and brushed his lips up and down the sensitive skin of her inner
thigh. Again and again.

Her body went taut as a drawn bowstring. She arched and
moaned—made sounds she could not restrain.

He licked up her inner thigh. She blindly opened to him and
accepted the intimate tasting.

He knew how to draw the bowstring so it must break. He did
it with his lips, tongue, and teeth. Though she fought it, sensations whipped
her like a severed string might lash whatever lay in its path.

Adam stood at the altar and looked from the cold Diana to
the warm woman who lay on his mantle, her limbs sprawled, gaze fixed on the
blue tiled ceiling. A sense of modesty must have overcome her, for she suddenly
drew in her arms and legs and rose.

She was shaky on her legs like a new fawn as she walked
around the chamber. She plaited her hair, aware of his gaze on her, he thought,
for she hunched her shoulders a bit, protecting her nudity from his view.

Adam went to the mantle and sat down. He could feel the
warmth of her body on the soft fur. He looped his arms about his knees and
pleasured himself with the look of her, from her slender, delicate ankles, up
the slim column of her spine, buttocks still rosy from his hands. His cock
stirred again.

When she turned, he was struck, not by her full breasts with
their dusky tips, but instead with the glimmer of the candle flames in her
eyes.

“Can you see in the dark?” he asked. “If I snuff these
candles, can you see like the deer can at night as it ranges the hills? Would
you find me if ‘twas dark?”

His heart beat faster when she walked slowly along the
altar, a small smile curving her lips. At each candle, she licked her
fingertips, then pinched out the flame. One by one.

Then it was dark—as black as if someone had drawn a mask
over his head. His blood rushed so fast in his veins he could not hear her
steps.

He stood up. “Where are you?” he asked.

“Find me,” she whispered from the left. He whipped around
and put out his hand, but found nothing.

A tiny sound made him turn again, to the right this time. He
slid his foot forward to the edge of the mantle and stretched out his arms.
“Come. Do not play.”

She gave a low, soft laugh. It seemed to come from in front
of him so he slid forward again, hands searching the air.

“Joan.”

“Adam.” His name came as if from the lips of a phantom. It
came from behind him and in front of him at the same time. She had spoken only
as loudly as necessary to cause an echo.

He turned. And turned again. His flesh was hot. Arousal
surged through him with such intensity, he grew hard enough to come apart
without even a touch. Sweat broke out on his back, chest, and thighs. The soles
of his feet grew slick, as did his palms.

She set her hands on his hips from behind. The intense
arousal grew to almost painful proportions.

He realized he could smell her—musk and outdoors, heat and
his seed. She stroked her fingers up and down his hips, skimmed his thighs, his
buttocks. His eyes were wide open, but he saw nothing. He could only feel,
breathe deeply, accept her caresses.

She stepped up against him, touching him with the tips of
her breasts, the down of her womanly hair. Her mouth was warm and moist as she
kissed his back. Then she was gone.

Loss rippled through him. His body throbbed for an ending.

“Joan.” He said her name sharply. “Where are you?”

“Find me.”

He whipped to her voice, took a quick step, and touched
naught but air.

She laughed—not with the giggle of a Lady Mathilda, but with
a low, seductive sound of joy.

This time, he closed his eyes and remembered how he had shot
the arrow whilst blindfolded. And so, he smiled to himself as he envisioned his
huntress walking naked in a forest meadow, seeking the stag who would come to
her call.

He envisioned the shape of her, the gold-brown tumble of her
hair, and when the air stirred he put out his arm and she was there. He
encircled her waist, drew her in, her back to him.

How perfectly they fit.

When he opened his eyes, he still saw nothing, but every
other sense had ripened to her.

“I am Diana’s stag,” he whispered at her ear, spreading his
hands on her hips as she had on him. Her bones were delicate, her skin warm.

He urged her down to her knees. In his head, he was the stag
and she the one he’d chosen for his mate.

He took her as the stag would his woodland lover.

She moaned his name and within moments he was overcome as
she met each of his thrusts with one of her own.

“Will your father be looking for you?” he asked.

Joan shook her head. “Nat���s wonderfully delicate in his
sensibilities and would never look in my chamber after I retire. He might say
my name, and if I did not answer, he would not know whether I was missing or
merely asleep. And he would not seek the answer.”

“Good for me.” He kissed her brow.

“I hear a river rushing, but I think ‘tis only the blood in
my head.”

“Can you hear my heart beating?”

They lay entwined on his mantle in the darkness. She placed
her hand on his chest. “I can feel it.”

She climbed astride his body, settled herself on him, and
smiled when he groaned. With a shake of her head, she spread her hair out. Then
she took up a handful of it and rubbed it across his chest.

“Joan.” He said her name with a quick, sharp gasp.

They bumped noses when he raised his head at the same time
she bent to kiss him. Her laughter and his mingled in the chamber and bounced
around them.

He fell still, but his muscles were tense as she stroked her
hair back and forth over his nipples. He began to breathe quickly when she ran
her hair over his belly to his groin.

It was a heady feeling, Joan realized, controlling a man’s
pleasure. She licked his skin after her caresses. She tongued his nipples. His
throat. His ribs. His belly.

“
Mon Dieu
,” he whispered. His fingers were gentle as
they smoothed the hair on her head in a rhythm that matched the strokes of her
tongue.

The black chamber broke down restraints she might have felt
if he were watching. She kneaded every sensitive inch of him, tasted him,
whispered her breath on him as her tongue brought him to the edge of the
madness that coursed through her veins.

And she knew he felt as she did, for he moaned with every
slide of her tongue and the sound echoed around them.

Adam could not hold the moans inside. He moaned again and
again and again until the sound had no end and no beginning.

Joan pulled away. Icy air ran over his skin.

“Joan. Sweet heaven, where are you? Come back.” He put his
arms out in search of her.

She must have felt the shift in the air. “Put your hands
down, Adam. I’m still here.”

“Why did you stop?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Joan?” He knew just where she was by her voice and the heat
of her. He swallowed her up in an embrace. Unerringly, he found her lips,
kissing her gently, but holding her so tightly she couldn’t shift an inch and
avoid his questions.

“You are thinking something and it made you wary of me
again,” he said.

“Not this time. I thought only how kissing you…that way,
made me feel frantic. Here.” She took his hand and pressed it to her belly.

He slid his fingers lower. “No more frantic than it made
me.”

They knelt knee to knee, every inch of their bodies touching
as they had their first moment together, in the lodge.

“Pretend we have never met,” she said, covering his hand.
“Pretend you do not want Ravenswood and I am not a servant. Pretend you’ll not
hurt me.”

Adam swallowed hard; his throat filled with a lump. “Is that
how you feel when you are with me? My inferior? You did once kiss me on the
lips before any who might have been in the bailey. Did you not think yourself
my equal that day?”

“‘Twas a mad impulse. I forgot myself. I cannot do so again.
Now, hush, and indulge me. Forget who we are. Let me forget who I am.”

“You are not a servant in my eyes.”

“I am a servant to Lady Mathilda.”

“But you are not to
me
.” He pulled his hand free.

“Just for this night, Adam. Indulge me. Now, when you cannot
see me and I might be…a lady of the king’s court. Perhaps even…a Mathilda…so
lovely every man wants her. Forget that my hands are not very soft and my skin
not perfect.”

How could he convince her she had naught to fear from
Mathilda? “Joan—”

She placed her hand over his lips; his words died in his
throat. If it was silence she wanted, then that is what she would get.

He gathered her supple body into his arms and bore her to
the floor. He kissed her eyelids, lingered on the cheeks she disdained, paid
homage to the golden dusting of marks he could not see, but found he already
knew by heart.

As he ran his fingertips after his lips, he thought he must
tell her how foolish she was the instant they stood in sunlight—so she could
watch his face and know he told the truth.

Her hips lifted against him, her thighs opened. He slid into
her with ease for she was slick with his seed.

In the complete dark, he felt things he’d never felt
before—how her muscles tensed on him, how her thighs quivered with each shift
of his body.

He used her moans to guide him, to tell him when to move
more gently—or press harder, or deeper.

“I must end, my love,” he said. He hardly recognized the
hoarse voice that issued from him. “Forgive me. I must.”

She turned her head, holding him as he heaved through his
release. He buried his moans against her neck. Then he felt her answering
tremors, the quick churn of her hips, the breathy gasps against his temple.

And he tasted the salt of her tears.

Then it was done. She moved away and he heard her fumbling
for her clothing. He reached out and grabbed for her hands, missing, then
grasping her wrists. With a quick jerk, he held her still. He conjured her face
and stared where he imagined her eyes to be, looking into their depths to
understand her. “Why did you weep?”

“I did not,” she said.

“Let me light a candle so I may see the lie in your eyes.”

“You’re mistaken.”

“I tasted the salt of your tears. Does our lovemaking bring
you grief?”

“Nay.” She touched his lips with her fingers. “Rest easy. It
brings me joy, naught but joy. I was overcome; that is all. It is a womanly
thing, I believe, weeping for joy.”

She shivered.

“You’re cold.”

“Aye. Allow me to dress.”

She shifted from his arms, and he felt rather than saw her
draw on a cloak of distance along with her clothing. With a sigh, he searched cautiously
across the chamber to the altar and struck the flint to light a candle. The one
small halo of golden light fell across Diana.

“This is you,” he said. “You are the huntress and I am
surely the stag who pays homage.” He found his clothing and pulled it on. “You
know that you are probably with child.”

“Or will be,” she said softly.

He handed her a candle and wondered what she thought inside.
Her expression was as shuttered as Richard’s lodge windows had been. “I will
see to you and the child. You have my oath on it,” he said.

Her hair was a wild tangle of gold and brown. It cascaded
across her shoulders and breast. While she plaited her hair, he examined her
face. Suddenly, he saw doubt and mayhap fear in her gentle eyes. He put out his
hand and smoothed a few strands of hair from her brow. “And if it is a
daughter, shall we name her Diana?”

* * * * *

Joan chose to leave the Roman chamber by the river way. If
Nat was out and about this early, and found her, he would only see her come
from the fields outside the castle, and she could say she had been searching
for Basil.

How quickly the lie came to her.

Adam had taken the way through the crypt. As Joan stood on
the river’s edge, by the spot where Adam had gone swimming the first night, she
looked up at the great towers of Ravenswood, now clear in the dawning light.

One of the reasons the Roman entrance was so hidden was the
way the towers and walls were situated. Here, at this point where even the
river’s flow was sluggish, no one on the wall or in the towers could see her.

She stripped off her gown, draped her clothing over a bush,
and waded into the shallows, but after her experience in the fish pond, she was
loath to go much deeper than her knees. The water was icy cold. Her nipples
tightened. They ached from Adam’s fingers, lips, and teeth. She lifted cold
water to her breasts to soothe the ache.

Then she washed away the evidence of his lovemaking. She
scrubbed her hands up and down the insides of her thighs, though she imagined
it was too late.

The deed was done. More than done. Another reason she could
never wed Oswald. A cold thought came to her. Wedding Adam did not assure her
she and Nat would remain at Ravenswood. He swore he was here to claim the
castle, but how was he planning on doing it without taking the lady with it?

Her skin broke out in gooseflesh. She climbed out of the
shallows and used her shift to dry off. A bird swooped near her and she ducked,
crying out, holding her gown before her.

It was a raven. It settled on a rock and turned its inky
head in her direction. She drew on her gown, knotting the leather thong that
acted as her belt.

The raven burst into flight. It rose overhead, into a sky
now clear of clouds and filled with pink and gold streaks of dawn light.

As the raven soared down again, its wings in a tight V, she
thought of Adam Quintin’s device. Suddenly, she realized it
was
a raven.
Why would Adam have a raven as his emblem? She stared up at the castle. The
former lords, the de Marles, all used ravens on their banners. Their very name
meant black bird. Was Adam somehow related to those former lords of Ravenswood?

Nat said he’d seen Adrian de Marle, son of Durand de Marle,
in the woods. Then she laughed. She was growing as fanciful as Nat. No de
Marle, whether Durand’s son or a distant relation, would return to England
under banishment. A man would have to be mad to take such a risk. Adam had
simply done as others had before him—emulated an admired lord’s device.

* * * * *

Adam stood in his tent and washed the scent of Joan away with
great regret.

She would never know how much she looked like the Diana
mosaic with her hair down, her slim white body standing in the same attitude as
the goddess in the mosaic, one hand on the altar.

As Adam dried his face and hands, Hugh swept into the tent.
Adam belted on his sword and slid his dagger into its sheath whilst Hugh paced
the small space.

“Where are you going so finely garbed?” Hugh asked.

“To see the bishop. He’s had an audience each morning with
two or more of the suitors. This is my morning.”

“We must leave this place,” Hugh said.

“When I’ve not achieved my goals?”

“You cannot wed Mathilda. She’ll make you miserable. No
lands are worth the sacrifices you’ll make to keep her happy and—”

“Hugh. Enough. Ravenswood is worth any sacrifice. There’s no
argument you may offer that will deter me.”

“There are no ravens here.”

Adam paused in the act of sheathing his dagger. “No ravens?”

“Aye. It is an ill omen. The ravens abandoned this castle
with your father’s banishment. I had it from the mews master.”

“That’s nonsense. They were captive birds.”

“Still, no one has seen ravens here since your father left.
I’ll wager you any amount
you
have not seen a single raven since you
arrived. Confess it.”

Adam fastened his mantle with the V pin that no one but he
knew was the raven, the symbol of the de Marle family. He would wear it beneath
the bishop’s nose. “You sound like an old woman. When I am lord here, I’ll net
dozens of ravens and fill the sky with the flutter of their wings.”

“‘Tis an omen of sorts, I tell you, and you’ll regret every
day if you live with that woman.”

“Not another word. I’ll not be deterred.”

Adam strode from his tent and across the bailey to the hall.
The sky had brightened over the ramparts, and he paused with one foot on the
lowest step up to the hall. As he watched, the sun rose over the castle wall,
bathing the stones in gold.

The longing, the fierce pangs of anger and desire for
revenge that had swept through him each morning he’d been within the castle
walls, did not rise to claw at him this time.

Instead, he thought of standing high over the river with
Joan and watching a different rising, that of the moon. He thought there could
be no one but she who would appreciate the sight as much as he.

He looked down at his foot on the step. Ravenswood was what
he wanted, wasn’t it? Then he looked over where the hunt master’s cottage sat
against the castle walls. A lord could do as he wished. And his first act as
lord of Ravenswood Castle would be to wed the huntress.

Who would stand in his way? Not William Marshal. He would
not care who shared the bed of Ravenswood’s lord if that man could hold it for
King Henry.

Adam presented himself in a timely manner before one of the
bishop’s clerics. The young man, who wore simple homespun robes, reminded him
that the bishop had little Christian charity. Else it would be Ivo sitting here
diligently writing the bishop’s letters.

The man gathered up several documents and gestured for Adam
to follow. They entered the bishop’s chamber. Whatever emotions Adam had
expected, they were swept away by the chamber’s complete and utter contrast to
what had been. The chamber was now that of a man who served God and the church
and liked his pleasures. The room held tables for his clerks and a small
shrine, as well as hunting boots and a long couch covered in fur robes.

The cleric announced him and then went to a great chest,
hefted the lid, and deposited the parchments. Adam thought he would give his
right hand to read the contents of those papers.

The bishop wore no homespun. Instead, he wore a fine robe of
deep green samite trimmed in white fur. When Adam knelt, the bishop extended
his holy ring for a kiss, one ring among others.

“Sit and have some wine.” The bishop took a seat by the
hearth.

Adam mused on a bishop who required poverty and chastity of
his priests, but kept this luxurious chamber for himself.