Rise of the Defender (25 page)

     As Christopher increased his onslaught,
knew one thing - he’d never tasted anything so sweet in his life and he was
afraid he would choke her trying to gain his fill. But he could not stop
himself and when her fingers entwined in his hair, he whisked her up into his
arms and laid her gently upon the bed, covering her up with his big body.

     Christopher’s hands moved to her full
breasts, gentle yet insistent as he massaged her through her blouse and she
arched into him, never having experienced such a thing but loving it instantly.
They were losing themselves in each other, faster than either one of them
imagined possible, until all that mattered was the feel and touch and taste of
one another.
My wife
, Christopher thought with disbelief and glee.
This
woman is my wife
.

     “Chris?” a very loud male voice boomed from
outside his door.

     Christopher took his lips from Dustin’s,
albeit reluctantly, and pushed himself off of her and moved for the door.
Dustin, suddenly embarrassed to realize the position she was in, jumped off the
bed and tried to look nonchalant although her face was mightily flushed.

     Christopher opened the door and David
pushed his way in, his eyes wide. He looked right at Dustin.

     “Is everything well?” he asked.

     Christopher leaned against the open door,
glancing at Dustin. “Everything is fine, David. As you can see, Lady Dustin and
I are whole and sound, no blood or bruises.”

     David looked around, noticing the disarray
of the room. The servants had told him of the way the baron had manhandled his
wife out by the rabbit hutch and he was genuinely concerned for her safety.

     “This room is a mess,” he commented,
looking back at Dustin.

     She cleared her throat and straightened her
skirt, feeling very self-conscious and ashamed of her wanton behavior. She
walked very quickly to the door, pushing past David and Christopher.

     “If you will excuse me, my lords,” she
said, her head down.

     “Where are you going?” Christopher asked.

     She didn’t dare look up, knowing her face
to be red. “I….I have a few duties to attend to. I must go.”

     “Dustin,” Christopher tried to stop her,
but she escaped him and David grabbed his arm when he tried to follow. He looked
reprovingly at his brother. “What do you do?” he indicated the grip on his
wrist.

     “What were you doing to her up here?” David
demanded. “This room is a sight.”

     Christopher was getting a bit tired of his
brother's meddling. He sighed heavily. “David, she did this in her anger,” he
said impatiently. “I did not lay a hand on her. And, furthermore, you interfere
like an old woman. Dustin is
my
wife, not
our
wife, and you will
kindly remember that in the future. I do not like your constant hovering about.”

     David raised an eyebrow. “Someone needs to
hover, Chris, since you obviously do not know the first thing about dealing
with her. She's your chattel and that's exactly how you treat her, and I am
ashamed for you.”

     Christopher stiffened. “I treat her better
than that, and you know it. How dare you accuse me of neglect and ignorance.”

     David shrugged and stepped away from his
brother, angry. “She’s better than that, Chris.”

     Christopher saw a good deal in that softly
uttered statement and his cheeks went red with rage as he faced off against his
brother.

     “Goddamn you, David,” he hissed. “You have
feelings for her. Can you deny it?”

     David tried to turn away. “You are mad.”

     Christopher blocked him. “Nay, little
brother, I am not,” he said. “Now this all makes sense; that is why you have
appointed yourself her personal defender. You care for my wife.”

     David’s face turned red and his mouth
tightened. “You do not know what you are saying.”

     Christopher glared at his brother, becoming
aware that his actions certainly implicated him in a much larger problem. But
David would deny it until he died and there was no use pressing the issue.

     Christopher relaxed a bit and stood back,
feeling strangely jealous that David should care for Dustin in something other
than a brotherly sense. His brother, a man he had fought with and killed for, a
man who was closer to him than anyone. It had always only been Christopher and
David against the world.             And now… there was Dustin.

     “She is
my
wife, David,” he said
after a few moments, his voice hoarse and quiet. “Always remember that.”

     Their eyes met, steadily, and for a moment
they simply stared at each other. David was the first one to break.

     “It is something I will never forget,” he
said evenly.

     Christopher waved his brother off,
retreating back down the hall to find his wife, leaving David standing alone,
struggling with himself.

***

     Dustin had all but disappeared, but
Christopher didn’t worry. He was coming to know her well enough to assume she
was somewhere on the grounds. The nooning meal came and went and she did not
appear, but still he did not concern himself. They had said a great deal to
each other that morn and he was feeling confident with the progression of their
relationship. In fact, he felt very hopeful. Instead of weakening it, his
mistake seemed to have strengthened the bond they were forming.

     He noticed that Jeffrey was also missing
from the nooning meal, but thought nothing of it. He was far more concerned with
David, who ate silently and did not as much as pass him a glance. Christopher
was sure he had struck close to the truth when he accused David of caring for
Dustin, and he knew his brother was angry at him, true or not.

     Leeton and Edward were supervising the
remaining repairs on the fortress as Christopher began arrangements for his
departure to London. He even went in to the village himself to retrieve the
dresses Rebecca had finished, and to pay her a lump sum for everything. He paid
her far more than she was expecting to receive, and she was extremely pleased.

     “My lord is generous,” she thanked him
graciously, almost embarrassed to be accepting such a sum.

     He fought off a grin. “’Tis worth it to see
Lady Dustin in something other than rags,” he told her.

     Without a hind glance, his arms laden with
three surcoats for his wife, Christopher moved for the door and opened it. Yet,
something inexplicably made him pause, and he found himself turning back to his
wife’s friend.

     Rebecca could read the uncertainty in his
eyes and she was puzzled. “Is something wrong, my lord?”

     “Nay, nothing is wrong.” He cleared his
throat hesitantly, eyeing Rebecca's mother. “May I may I have a word privately,
Mistress Rebecca?”

     Rushing to do such a great man’s bidding,
Rebecca hurried outside and the closed the door behind her. She clasped her
hands together, waiting patiently for him to speak. He loaded the dresses onto
his destrier before he uttered another word, and then when he spoke, it was
timidly.

     “You have known Lady Dustin for some time,”
he said.

     “Aye, my lord, since we were small girls,”
she answered politely.

     He nodded, scratching his head underneath
his raised visor. “I have never been very good at pretense. My wife is a
mystery to me and I wish to know more about her. Will you help me?”

     “If I can,” Rebecca replied, wondering what
he meant, exactly.

     He could see her confusion and he hastened
to clarify. “Tell me why she hates men so much,” he asked.

     Rebecca shrugged. “I do not believe she
hates men but I think she resents them for the God-given power they have over
women. She is very independent and she does not like to be given orders.”

     “I know,” he said wryly.  “I have been on
the receiving end of such displays of rebellion.”

     As Rebecca giggled, he allowed himself to
let his guard down a bit, now on the subject of Dustin and genuinely curious
about her. He wanted to know what Rebecca knew of his wife, a mystery more than
any other mystery he had experienced.

      “Will you tell me of the Lady Dustin you
know?”  he asked, almost pleadingly. “I would be grateful.”

     Rebecca could see that through all of the
metal and muscle and titles and hardness that he was simply a man with human
emotions. It struck her that he was sincere in his wish to want to know more about
the woman he married so she felt comfortable divulging what she could. She
hoped Dustin wouldn’t mind.

     “She is intelligent, yet simple,” she said
quietly. “She loves her flowers, her animals, and her keep. She was most
distressed when her father turned it, and her, over to you. She thought she and
her mother were getting along quite nicely by themselves.”

     “The keep was in disrepair,” he remarked
faintly.

     “Because Lady Mary refused to do anything until
Sir Arthur returned from the quest,” Rebecca told him. “She believed it was his
keep and she had no right to touch it.”

     “Ah,” he nodded in understanding. “A wise
woman. Continue.”

     Rebecca complied. “Dustin has never been
ambitious. She would rather tend her animals and garden than go to court. She
simple doesn’t care for material things, which is why I am surprised she is
wearing these fine dresses. She has shunned such things up until now.”

     He looked at her thoughtfully. “Yet she is
not a fine and delicate woman, as flowers and animals would suggest.”

      Rebecca grinned. “She can fight like a man
and climb a tree like a cat, and she is not afraid to dirty her hands with hard
work,” she said. “Yet she is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen and she
reeks with feminine sensuality, which I suspect you already know. Does she
puzzle you overmuch, my lord?”

     He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Overmuch
indeed,” he said, shaking his head and mounting his destrier. He paused to gaze
at the woman, his expression grateful. “Thank you, mistress, for everything.
And I trust you will keep our conversation confidential.”

     “Of course, my lord,” Rebecca agreed,
stepping back as he reined his huge animal around. “And… my lord?”

     He paused a moment. “What is it?”

     Rebecca smiled impishly. “I approve of you spanking
her. She needs it.”

     He cracked smile and slapped his visor
down. “More than she gets.”

     Rebecca laughed as she watched the man ride
off, thinking that her friend Dustin was a very lucky woman, indeed.  Gaze
lingering on the big knight as he headed off towards the castle, she went back
into her hut.

***

     Two pairs of eyes watched Christopher de
Lohr ride off toward Lioncross, leaving the home of the pretty little
red-headed wench. A lover, of course. She would be the first step in the quest
to destroy de Lohr, as Sir Ralph had ordered.  When he had returned to London,
he had left a few men behind to spy, to linger, and to begin the no-doubt long
and arduous process of destroying the Defender of the realm. It had taken
nearly two days for the spies to decide where to begin, and the redhead was as
good a start as any. Finally, they had their opportunity.

     “His whore,” one man mumbled.

     His comrade, dirty and covered with oozing
scabs that itched, nodded his scruffy head.

     “Ralph told us to look for a link, and
there she is,” he replied. “We will start with her.”

     “Do we kill her?” the other man asked.

     The oily man’s gaze lingered on the neat
little hut in the distance. “Ralph wanted insight and answers to the baron,” he
said. “We will get our answers, then we will kill her so she cannot tell what
we have done.”

     The short, fat man nodded, making sure his
dagger was concealed beneath his tunic. Together, they made their way to the hut
in the near distance with nothing other than murder and blood on their mind.  They
had their orders and they had a plan.  It would start here.

     In the name of the Prince and with the goal
of destroying the king, the annihilation of Christopher de Lohr commenced.

***

     The evening meal at Lioncross consisted of
roast beef, Christopher’s favorite meal. He had missed it dreadfully in the Holy
Land and found goat to be a very poor substitute. His mouth fairly watered as
he dug into a huge knuckle of succulent, stringy beef.

     He didn’t expect Dustin to join him. He had
found her later in the afternoon tending an overgrown flower patch, at least
that was what he had called it, but Dustin had stiffly informed him that it was
a garden her mother had planted. He had been extremely annoyed to find Jeffrey
with her, standing silently as she cut and pruned and pulled, and he was not
surprised to see that Jeffrey’s hostility had returned full-bore, undoubtedly due
to the wench-bedding rumors.  Much to his disgust, he found he couldn’t be too
angry at the man’s attitude.  In fact, he didn’t really blame him.