So Great A Love (9 page)

“Will you be joining us, my lord?” Guy asked.
Having removed his wet boots and spread his cloak out to dry, he
was already settled on his makeshift bed, with his feet toward the
fire which Michael was building up anew using logs taken from a
basket that was set at a safe distance from the hearth.

“No,” Arden said. “Tonight I have a longing
for privacy.” Out of habit he picked up his belt and sword, to take
them with him. Leaving Michael and Guy to their makeshift beds, he
headed for the short staircase leading to the solar and the lord's
chamber.

He guessed the fatigue that suddenly
overwhelmed him was the result of finally reaching Bowen, of
knowing he would be undisturbed there. He yawned mightily, grateful
to be rid of the weight of his armor and of his boots.

The manor house was silent around him. His
feet made no sound on the freshly swept floor of the solar as he
crossed to the door of the lord's chamber. It was an affectation to
have such a room in a simple manor. Lord's chambers belonged in the
tower keeps of castles, but the architect of Bowen Manor had built
the house of solid stone and had added the lord's chamber for the
first owner, who had wanted to be private with his wife.

Arden could understand the earlier lord's
desire for solitude. He craved it himself, after years of living
always with others. The need to be alone, to burrow into the
privacy of a personal lair like some wounded animal, was the reason
why he had commanded the sentry at the gatehouse to let the
seneschal and the domestic staff remain undisturbed in their beds.
He’d have time enough to announce his arrival in the morning, time
enough then to answer the well-meant questions of Sir Wace.

The door in the solar wall opened without a
sound. As he stepped into the lord's chamber Arden took note of the
well-oiled hinges on the door, and of the cleanliness around him.
No taint of dust or mildew or dampness greeted him, only the clean
fragrance of lavender and of some other, more complex scent that he
could not at first identify. The room was warm.

Arden wondered whether he ought to praise Sir
Wace for insisting that the private rooms be kept in good order
while the master was away, or criticize him for allowing the
servants to burn charcoal in the brazier of an unoccupied chamber.
Still, after his long, cold ride, he was glad of the unexpected
heat.

He stood just inside the door for a moment,
letting his eyes grow used to the darkness, which he quickly
discovered was not entirely devoid of light. The charcoal in the
round brazier gave off a slight glow and, though it was well after
midnight, the window embrasures admitted streaks of pale light
around the edges of the shutters, the pearly-white reflection from
the snow that lay thick upon the ground and that blew through the
air on gusts of howling wind.

Soon Arden could see well enough to make out
the large form of the curtained bed to the right of the door. A low
shape near the brazier appeared to be a bench and there was a table
next to the bed with an object on it that showed a faint gleam in
the dimness. A metal candlestick, perhaps.

Arden decided he did not need a candle. His
eyes were adjusting enough to show him where he could leave his
clothes. He had guessed correctly about the presence of a bench. He
went to it, to drop upon it his belt and sword. The point of the
scabbard scraped along the floor when he let it go. He thought he
heard another sound from somewhere in the room, but the wind
blasted at the shutters just then, rattling them hard. Arden
shivered at the sound. He hated the wind.

He listened for a moment, then decided the
wind was all he had heard. He knew he was letting down his guard, a
mistake that could have cost him his life elsewhere, but he was in
his own manor, the sentry at the gate had assured him that everyone
was long abed and asleep, and he was simply too weary to
investigate.

Lowering himself to the bench he pulled off
his padded gambeson, his linen undershirt, and his hose, leaving
the garments where they fell. He wished he could have a hot bath to
ease the muscle aches that were the result of riding for too many
days without enough rest, but a bath would involve waking the
servants and making explanations for his unexpected presence. Arden
did not want to talk to anyone. His bath could wait until the
morrow.

Naked as the day he was born, Arden hastened
to the curtained bed. From the evidence of careful housekeeping he
had observed so far, he assumed he would find a quilt there to keep
him warm after the charcoal in the brazier had grown cold.

He found more than a quilt. The bed was made
up with linen sheets. He could feel their smoothness under his
callused fingers. The sheets were covered by a well-aired,
sweet-smelling quilt that was plentifully stuffed with feathers.
And the sheets were warm. Not questioning what he found, Arden slid
into the big bed with a sigh and stretched out his long legs. He
stretched again, luxuriating in unaccustomed comfort.

His foot touched another bare foot.

He went perfectly still, awaiting a response.
A sleepy murmur and a soft rustling came from the other side of the
bed. Silence followed. No threat, no blade at his throat or
plunging into his heart.

But Arden did not expect a threat. He knew –
had known from the first instant when his toe made contact with the
slender, delicate length of that foot – the other occupant of his
bed was female. She was also deeply asleep, for after her first
disturbed sounds she evinced no further sign of wakening.

Arden's immediate reaction was curiosity. His
next reaction, following close upon the first, was surprise that he
should be curious. It had been a long time since he experienced
anything more than a vague, mild interest in the everyday life that
went on around him. Women, in all their various manifestations, he
treated with polite indifference. So it had been for five cold and
empty years, and so it would continue to be for the rest of his
life.

Still, he did wonder who was occupying his
bed. Within the shadowed recesses of the bed, with its curtains
drawn close except upon the side nearest to the brazier, Arden
could see little but varying shades of gray and black. Ah, but he
could touch, and beneath the sheet he reached out a hand toward the
unknown woman. He made contact with what was undeniably a gently
rounded, feminine hip.

The sleeper did not respond. Compelled by an
increasing curiosity, Arden let his hand stray down over a silken
thigh and a firm calf to a neatly turned ankle and then, finally,
to the slender foot that had been his initial discovery. He skimmed
his hand quickly upward again, barely touching her hip and the
sweet indentation of her waist, to settle upon a high, small
breast.

He knew he ought to remove his hand from her.
Even if she proved to be the manor prostitute – and he could think
of no reason why such a creature would be alone in the lord's bed
and not out in the barracks plying her trade among the men-at-arms
– were she the most willing female inside the manor palisade,
still, Arden had nothing to give her. He had kept himself from
women for years, and he would leave this woman untouched. He would
take his hand from her breast. He would do it now, at once. Yet he
could not seem to lift his fingers from the rounded, yielding
softness. Almost against his will, as if an impulse from another,
earlier life was driving him, he pressed gently upon the smooth,
warm flesh.

The woman stirred, murmuring something Arden
could not decipher, turning toward him. As she turned, a wash of
hair streamed over Arden's hand and arm. It was as smooth as silk,
thick and straight by the feel of it, and it smelled fresh and
clean. The scent rising from the warm, unconscious body beside him
was a mixture of roses and gillyflowers, of lilies and of other
blossoms Arden could not immediately distinguish. All he knew was
that his bed partner smelled like an English summer day.

His weariness forgotten, his body beginning
to rouse toward vigorous masculine life, Arden wound his fingers
through the woman's silky tresses and drew her closer to him, even
as he moved nearer to her. He knew how wrong it was to give way to
a desire he had not experienced for far too long, and with an
unknown female at that, but he was so amazed to feel the blood
coursing hot and thick through his veins and to discover that his
thoughts were plunged into a delicious turmoil, that he could not
bring himself to fight against what was happening to him. Later, he
could regret what he was about to do; for the present, he wanted
only to hold her.

She came to him unresisting at first, to rest
her head upon his shoulder. Arden breathed in deeply, inhaling the
complex fragrance of many flowers and the warmth of her. She
murmured again and placed her hands on his chest, her fingers
working their way through his body hair to touch the flesh beneath.
Arden shivered at the intimate contact. And then she spoke in a
drowsy, pleading voice.

“No, my lord,” she whispered. “Please, not
tonight.”

Her accent was that of a well-bred
noblewoman, not a common wench at all. Arden told himself he should
have guessed as much by her cleanliness and sweet scent. From the
way she spoke as if he was familiar to her, he realized the unknown
woman in his arms was still more than half asleep and unaware of
who was holding her. From out of his past a fragment of youthful
humor woke and seized control of his tongue, banishing his usual
taciturn bitterness.

“I have never taken a woman who did not want
me, too,” he said, keeping his voice soft so as not to startle her.
“However, since I found you in my bed, I did assume you were
willing.”

Unable to resist the impulse while knowing it
was wrong and wicked, he let his lips linger on her cheek, upon
skin smooth and soft as any rose petal. In another moment he was
likely to tell her so, to whisper the compliment into her ear.

Before he could speak again he felt her
stiffen and knew she was coming out of sleep into awareness. Her
hand pushed against his chest as if to separate them.

He recognized the exact instant when she came
fully awake....

Margaret wakened only slowly. Perhaps
influenced by her unease of earlier in the day and by her
possession of unwelcome knowledge, she was locked in a dream – not
a pleasant dream, either – and her dreamlike state persisted in a
paralyzing way that made it impossible for her to protest what was
happening. A foot touched hers and a hairy limb stretched itself
against her smoother leg. Margaret knew from her marital relations
with Lord Pendance exactly how a bare, hairy male leg felt when
pressed against her own leg.

She also knew this was just part of the
dream, for in it she was back in Pendance Castle, on one of the
nights of her ten-year-long marriage, when her elderly husband had
come to her bed and rubbed his sinewy leg against hers, while his
talon-like hands groped at her breasts and her belly. She
remembered a bony knee being thrust between her thighs, to force
them apart so he could push his cold fingers into her most private
feminine places, to be quickly followed by the only part of his
body that was not cold, but was always damp and clammy,
nonetheless. Margaret experienced a sudden, chilling memory of
herself lying rigid in bed in the dark, while Lord Pendance huffed
and panted between her thighs before he fell across her, wheezing
into her ear.

The leg that was pressing against hers drove
those unhappy memories out of her sleep-dulled mind and her
half-dream, half-waking experience began to take on a new texture.
Hard muscle shaped both calf and thigh of the leg, and the hair,
though dense, was soft when the man rubbed against Margaret's skin.
Furthermore, the fingers stroking along her side were gentle. When
they reached her breast and paused there, to cover her tender flesh
and knead it, the touch caused no discomfort.

Unless the unexpected flare of heat deep
inside her could be called discomfort. Never having felt anything
like it before, Margaret did not know what to call the heat. The
man's fingers brushed across her nipple several times, in a way
that seemed to her to be quite deliberate. She felt her nipples
harden while the warmth inside her increased with his careful, yet
determined motion.

Only several hours later, when she was alone
and thinking more clearly, did it occur to Margaret that any woman
truly bent upon spending her life in a convent should have
protested what was happening with all the outraged courage of a nun
whose virtue was threatened. At the time when it occurred, she did
not know what to do in response to the intimate caresses being
lavished upon her. These were not the cold, grasping claws she
remembered, but a young man's hands, calloused, yet strong and
warm, and pleasantly firm where they touched her.

Margaret was not used to being handled so
gently or so sweetly, and the man's touch did seem to be a part of
her dream which, in the peculiar way of dreams, had shifted with
startling abruptness from resigned acceptance of an unpleasant duty
to surprising sensual delight.

Then, to her relief – or was it to her
regret? she was not sure which – the man's hand left her breast to
wind through her hair. She put out her own hand to his chest,
finding it broad and well muscled when she stroked it in sleepy
pleasure. He drew her closer and for a moment she did not resist.
Something in her longed to be held tightly against his hard,
masculine strength. In her heart she was certain, nonsensical
though the notion was, that the unknown man who shared her bed
would never hurt her.

In the next instant dreams both pleasant and
unpleasant vanished as Margaret came wide awake and fully aware of
what was happening. Unable to move, with her breath choked in her
throat so she could not cry out, she desperately tried to determine
who the man was. She knew at once it could not be Sir Wace. The
honest seneschal of Bowen would never commit such an assault upon
her person. Nor was it one of the men-at-arms, who seldom bathed.
The intruder in bed with her smelled of leather and horse and a
certain manly aroma, but he did not reek of months of old, stale
sweat, nor of ale and the onions and cabbage consumed at the midday
meal, as men-at-arms were wont to smell.