Rexanne Becnel (38 page)

Before he could gather it into his hands, however, she moved to take hold of the gold-braided hem of his tunic. As she tugged the blue serge up and over his wide shoulders, he raised his arms obligingly and she was reminded of their first meeting.

It had been in this very room and she’d had to undress him then as well. But where she’d been frightened and filled with dread then, now she felt only love.

His shirt was next. She cast it carelessly aside, for she was feeling eager as he stood before her bare-chested.

“Now it’s your turn,” he murmured huskily, and he reached for her.

“No.” Lilliane stared at him seriously, putting up one hand to keep him at a distance.

But Corbett caught her hand and twined his fingers with his so that their palms were pressed warmly together. Somehow it seemed the most intimate of gestures, and Lilliane felt a rush of love for this man go over her. For a moment she could do no more than stare into his deep gray eyes.

“If I may not remove your clothes until mine are gone, then you must hurry, Lily. I’m only human and you tempt me beyond endurance.” Lilliane did not delay although her cheeks burned when she removed his braies and then his small cloth. Yet when she looked at her husband standing so erect and proud in his naked glory, she could feel no shame for her brazenness.

She kept her wide, golden gaze locked upon his as she slowly began to remove her own clothes. Corbett’s face took on an expression approaching torment as she struggled with the tight lacings at her wrists and at either side of her waist. But as she finally put the full-skirted garment aside, Lilliane was more than pleased to see the rigid evidence of Corbett’s arousal. She let her hair fall before her as she bent to remove her hose and then her delicately woven kirtle. It was a gesture done more for the scanty protection it gave her from his gaze than to be provocative. Yet it proved to be the final straw for Corbett.

“Come here, Lily,” he murmured in a low, tortured tone.

She started to go to him, as meekly and obediently as a wife should. But then she stopped; she wanted to show him so much more than just obedience.

It took all her mettle to raise her head bravely and shake her hair back. Only when she stood before him proudly in her nakedness did she at last come to him.

Corbett’s eyes seemed to devour her. She was trembling with excitement, her own arousal now clearly displayed to him. When she reached him he stood as one entranced until she slid her hands up his chest to encircle his neck and then fitted herself intimately against him. It was an unmaidenly thing to do, indecent by any lady’s standards. But Lilliane knew instinctively that it was the right way to show her love to Corbett.

In an instant he gathered her into his steely embrace with a fierceness that took her breath away. She’d had plans to seduce him, to try to imitate all the ways he’d kissed her and touched her in the past until this time he would be the one begging her to come to him. But she’d underestimated both the power of her seductive preparations and the strength of his raging desire.

Corbett’s lips were like fire on her skin. Everywhere they passed—over her eyelids and her cheeks, down to the corners of her mouth, and the lobes of her ears—she was inflamed. Then he moved in sweet delicious kisses along the sensitive curve of her neck and lower, to the high outthrust swell of her breasts.

Corbett sank to one knee then and one of his hands moved to cup her derriere. His mouth became more deliberate as he began to kiss the pearly skin of first one of her breasts and then the other. Nearer and nearer he circled until her nipples were aching with need and Lilliane was arching toward him desperately.

She caught his head between her hands, marveling that his hair could be so soft when the rest of him was so hard. She bent to kiss the top of his head and then, using all her waning strength, guided him most demandingly to take her nipple in his mouth.

The exquisiteness of his lips upon that tight rosy nub as he sucked it into his mouth then teased it with his teeth and tongue sapped the last of Lilliane’s strength. Had he not held her so snugly to him, she was certain she would have fallen. As it was she sagged against him, crying at the acute pleasure and yet still wanting some ease for the voracious need building in her belly.

But Corbett was relentless. First one, then the other of her breasts received his total devotion. Then, when she thought surely he must bring her to the bed or she would die of longing for him, he moved his kisses lower still.

Lilliane stood leaning over him, her hands braced upon his massive shoulders as he bent to kiss her belly. When his thumbs tenderly opened her most feminine center to those extraordinary kisses, she cried out in ecstasy. “Corbett, Corbett! My one sweet love!”

Then she began to shudder with the explosive power of her release. Her hands gripped him blindly as she arched back in that perfect, perfect agony.

It lasted forever. It ended too soon. She only knew that Corbett was on his knees grasping her so tightly to him that it hurt. His head was bowed just beneath her chin and she rested her tear-streaked cheek on his damp, raven locks.

She was crying and unable to stop when he finally raised his head to look at her. Their eyes seemed to meet forever, and in a brief moment of clarity Lilliane thought that his gaze had never seemed so clear. Then he lifted her high in his arms and laid her down upon their bed.

His entry was swift and sure. Lilliane wrapped herself completely about him, wanting more than anything in the world to give him whatever he wanted. If he wanted an obedient wife, then she would become that wife. If he wanted a mistress to provide him with the most carnal of pleasures, she would be that mistress. If he wanted an heir, oh, please God, let her bear him their child.

And if he wanted to be rid of her …

She could not think of that at all. Instead she rose to meet his powerful thrust, taking all he had to give over and over again.

When he pulled her upright to straddle his thighs so that they were face to face, she was certain he touched the very center of her being. Her fingers dug into his shoulders as she felt the passion rising within her again. As he strained in an increasing tempo and then began to stiffen, her own passion peaked once more and, as if in a violent storm, they reached their zenith together.

There were no words afterward. They lay quietly together after catching their breath, but neither of them sought to break the intimate tangle of their limbs.

Lilliane lay with her head on Corbett’s chest, his heart beating strongly beneath her ear. One of her arms lay across his chest and under her hand she felt the three scarred ridges on the back of his shoulder.

That heartbeat. Those scars. At that moment they seemed somehow to symbolize everything about him. He was a warrior, scarred outside and perhaps inside as well. Yet his heart pounded so adamantly, so constantly within his chest. Could that heart ever love her? she wondered wistfully.

The words came to her lips unbidden. Her soft “I love you” was less than a whisper in the quiet night air. But she meant it as nothing she’d ever meant before. Whether or not he was awake to hear, whether or not he would even believe her, it was nonetheless true.

She loved him and she always would.

I
T WAS A FRAGILE
peace.

Lilliane was truly grateful that Corbett had ceased his nightly drinking and had regained a modicum of his earlier, easy mood. But she knew at the same time that she had but won a skirmish. The enemy was not yet defeated. The war was not over.

She saw it in the way his eyes followed her, although he always had a smile ready for her. She sensed it in the way he concerned himself with every least detail of the castle preparations. The only odd note in his otherwise careful behavior was his annoyance with his friend, Sir Dunn.

Dunn, it seemed, had suddenly grown to like her. Gone were the suspicious stares and the watchfulness. Now he greeted her most cordially, always inquiring after her health, or little Elyse’s. And if Corbett was about, Dunn always sent him a smug, almost triumphant look. This would bring a scowl to Corbett’s face. But no words would pass between the two men. Just those strange, telling looks.

Despite the relative calm at Orrick, however, Corbett’s tension seemed to increase up to the day the guests began to arrive.

Tullia and her husband, Sir Santon, came first, and the two sisters met in a warm embrace.

“How content you look, sister!” Tullia cried as her soft brown eyes took in every aspect of Lilliane’s appearance.

“And you look quite the happy wife.”

“Soon to be a mother,” Tullia confided with a most rapturous expression. “I hope you are soon so fortunate as I.”

“So do I,” Lilliane whispered as she hugged her sister anew. Her gaze sought out Corbett who was greeting Sir Santon most hospitably. All the signs were there to indicate that she might, indeed, be with child. Her second monthly flux was even now overdue. And yet she still held back from telling Corbett. She told herself she just wanted to be sure. But a little part of her lived in dread of the doubting look she might see on his face. He’d never again brought up William’s accusations—lies was a more accurate term. But she feared he still believed them. Would he doubt the true parentage of this child she bore?

Lilliane shook off those troubling thoughts and smiled at her youngest sister. “You must be quite exhausted from your journey. I had your own chamber prepared so that you may be most comfortable.”

She barely had them settled before more guests appeared on their heels. Sir Roger and Sir Charles come from London along with Lady Elizabeth and her father. Lord Gavin from Durmond and the earl of Gloucester. Even Odelia and Sir Aldis from their home in Gaston, their greeting meek and hesitant. Although there was still a reserve between her and her sister, Lilliane was relieved that Odelia and her husband seemed more accepting of her marriage to Corbett.

The castle was filled to overflowing and was in a constant hubbub, for aside from the invited guests, there were also their guards, their personal servants, and their horses to be housed and fed. The kitchen was filled with activity at every hour of the day or night as breads were baked, huge haunches roasted, and every manner of fish and fowl cleaned and prepared for the guests.

Despite the endless supervision and the myriad of details the servants plagued her with, Lilliane took a profound pleasure in hosting the Christ’s Mass festivities. When she had prepared the castle for Tullia’s wedding feast—and unexpectedly her own—she’d felt a certain detachment as well as a sense of loss, for she had thought Orrick would never again be her home. And then the wedding feast itself had been a complete sham.

But the preparations for these lengthy festivities were another matter entirely. She was determined to enjoy every aspect of Christ’s Mass: the feasting, the games, the entertainments, and the gift giving. She did not feel at all the same trepidation she’d felt among the crowds in London, for now she was on home ground. Now she was at Orrick.

It wasn’t until after the feast of St. Thomas that Lilliane felt the first qualm about the festivities. Corbett had taken the male guests on a hunt in the winter woods quite early. Most of the ladies were taking advantage of this winter reprieve from their own wifely tasks to stay long abed. So it was that Lilliane was alone with her kitchen books when the chamberlain announced the arrival of still another guest.

Lilliane hurried to the bailey as the small retinue of riders crossed the bridge, but when she recognized Sir Hughe of Colchester, her smile began to fade. Still, there was nothing to do but greet him as cordially as possible despite the instinctive dislike she felt for the man. And even though she worried about Corbett’s strange interest in his brother’s every move, she nonetheless hoped her husband would soon return and relieve her of any lengthy discourse with the ominous Sir Hughe.

“I bid you welcome, Sir Hughe.” She curtsied as he dismounted and tossed his reins carelessly to a waiting groom.

“What is this!” he exclaimed with a joviality not reflected in his narrow gaze. “I bid you greet me as a loving sister-in-law, Lilliane.” With that he gave her a forceful hug and a hard kiss directly on her mouth.

Lilliane was more than shocked by his unwonted familiarity. She stepped back quite startled and stared at him warily. But Hughe seemed determined to befriend her.

“Don’t be so shocked, my dear. Despite all that has passed between our houses, I am certain that Orrick and Colchester shall now be at peace. Why, it will almost be as if we were one united demesne.” He grinned.

“Y-yes, so it shall,” Lilliane stammered, quite certain now that something was afoot. Corbett and Hughe were far from affectionate brothers. Neither Corbett’s attempt at only a casual interest in Colchester, nor Hughe’s unexpected friendliness toward Orrick could quite disguise that. But Lilliane was intrigued.

When Hughe inquired about a number of the guests and then finally asked after William of Dearne, her curiosity only intensified.

“William is not here,” she murmured as she offered him a tankard of ale in the great hall.

“Indeed?” Sir Hughe swished the dark-brown ale thoughtfully in the tankard. Then his watchful gaze rose to her face. “I am surprised he was even invited. Some say he may forgo the pleasure of Orrick entirely.”

He sought information. Lilliane was certain of it. Well, so did she, she admitted to herself. It could be quite enlightening to linger at conversation with Sir Hughe.

“Oh, I’m sure he must come.” She fingered her heavy meridian ring, then affected a faint, knowledgeable smile. “After all, his daughter, Elyse, remains at Orrick.”

“But not with his consent. I heard Corbett was quite ruthless toward William.” This time he smiled. “And toward you as well.”

Lilliane could not prevent the frown that creased her brow, nor the color that stained her cheeks. Did the entire kingdom know of William’s lies and Corbett’s suspicions? Did the ladies even now whisper of it in their rooms and the men jest crudely at the expense of her reputation?