Suzanne Robinson (9 page)

He went still. What was he that her confession of innocence drove him mad with the desire to initiate?

“Marry, Gratiana,” he said as he lowered his mouth to hers, “you may know little of what you’re doing, but you’re doing it right marvelously.”

“But—”

His lips cut off her words, and soon he could tell from the way her breasts rose and fell that she’d forgotten what she’d wanted to say. He pulled his lips free, only to find himself unable to resist kissing her neck. God, he loved her flesh in his mouth. When he reached the base of her throat, her fists gripped his doublet and twisted it. “Saints,” she muttered. “Saints, Tristan.”

He heard the frenzy in her tone and felt a tingle of anticipated victory.

“Mmmm?” He was trying to devour her neck. He pressed his hands against her back and squeezed her against him.

“You smell like sea air after a storm,” she said. “And you feel like …” She groaned.

At the sound, he suddenly yanked at buttons and laces and slipped his hands inside her bodice. His fingers skimmed over the flesh above her breasts.

“You feel like … I’ve never felt anything so wondrous,” he murmured. “Wondrous, wondrous.”

Blood rushed to his head, and to his groin, for each time he said the word, she thrust her breast against him.

She gasped. “I shouldn’t.”

“Oh, aye, you should.”

Her voice was low, febrile, and tense, but it must have been his hands working their way up beneath her skirt that finally woke her. She cried out as he began to brush his arousal against her.

Planting her hands on his chest, she thrust him away from her body. “N-no.”

“Jesu!” He whirled and pressed his burning body to the wall.

His cheek rested against cold stone. Clawing at the mortar, he forced himself to breathe deeply. Pen came up behind him and touched his shoulder. He flinched.

“Touch me not, woman. Jesu preserve me. Do you want to end up on the floor?”

“No, Tristan.”

He whipped around then to stare at her, chest heaving, wishing she hadn’t said that word.

Pen put her fingers to trembling lips. “Saints, I
hadn’t meant to—there are things of which you know nothing.”

“I know what you do to me.”

She wasn’t listening to him. Poised for flight, she shook her head. Swearing, he lunged at her and captured her wrist.

“I’ve watched you,” he said. “You want me, but you’re afraid. Afraid of something that brings only pleasure. God, I think I shall go mad, Gratiana. I feel all swollen and surging—like the surf, only hot. So terribly hot.”

She covered her ears and hissed. “Don’t. Don’t talk to me like that.”

He was still so swollen he could hardly walk straight. Blood pounded in his ears. He cursed and grabbed both her wrists.

“No,” she said through her teeth. “You don’t even know if you’ve a wife.”

“I don’t.”

“You can’t know that.”

Her voice rose, and he heard a thin note of pain. “I can’t. Dear God, there is peril here as well as pleasure.”

“What peril?”

He heard a half sob. Without another protest, he released her.

“As you wish, for now.”

Feeling dazed, he followed her into the sunlight of the bailey before balking. When he caught her arm, she turned a questioning gaze on him.

“You must face it, soon or late,” he said.

She glanced away from him. “I beseech you, trouble me no more about it.”

“Jesu, but you know little of men if you think I can forget what just passed.”

“It’s not what you think.”

“Then make me understand,” he said.

She only shook her head and kept her face turned from him, as if she were afraid her will would break if she looked at him. His body ached for release. She was driving him to lunacy. He hadn’t been with a woman in—he didn’t know how long, but long enough to make him want to howl with it. He began to feel as if he’d been cast into some mad phantasm by that storm, and he had yet to wake. Yet he was awake. God, how he wished he knew whether he was the kind of man to seduce Pen without remorse, or not. And he feared that soon he wouldn’t care.

A shout from the battlements jolted him from his musings. Dibbler was on the wall walk next to the gatehouse, pointing to the west. Something in his stance evoked a response in Tristan. That cry, that gesture. A warning he found familiar. Tristan thrust Pen from him and bolted for the gatehouse stairs once more. She ran after him, and Dibbler was gesturing at them with impatience as they joined him.

He pointed again, and Tristan gazed across fields to the woods. For some ill-defined reason, he expected to see a line of men, cavalry, sun on armor and standards snapping in the wind. No, mayhap there should be great stones, huge monoliths.…Tristan searched the landscape even as he wondered at this last idea. At first he saw nothing, but in raking the horizon, he glanced at a solitary hill devoid of trees. Upon it sat a man on horseback, his cloak slapping in a breeze that had suddenly churned up the air.

The stranger moved not at all, nor did his mount. Although he was too far away for Tristan to discern his features, his presence somehow roused an unsettled alertness. The cloak sailed out behind the man, flapping and tossing in the wind. The horse’s mane and
tail danced in the air, yet neither creature stirred. The contrast caused uneasiness within Tristan.

He stared at the motionless rider, and somehow knew the man was staring back at him—not the others on the wall—only him. His skin prickled, and he couldn’t look away. If he’d been a hound, his fur would have risen, and he would have growled. Without breaking the link between them, he addressed Pen.

“Who is he?”

“I know not,” Pen replied as she leaned over the battlement and peered at the stranger. “He’s clad all in black. No livery, no colors. It’s not Ponder.” She paused, then resumed on a note of surprise. “This is a young man, like unto yourself, and … he’s a stranger to the isle.”

He continued to stare at the figure in black while the breeze increased and lashed at him. Suddenly he leaned out over the wall. He was almost certain the stranger was trying to commune with him. His hand went to his side, groping for a sword, then dropped, empty.

“Why does he not approach, mistress?” Dibbler asked.

“Mayhap he saw what happened to Ponder’s men,” she said. “And we have shut up the castle. Anyway, I wouldn’t let him in if he’s an intimate of Ponder’s.”

“There’s something wrong,” Tristan said.

“There’s much wrong with those who bide with Ponder.”

He still hadn’t been able to take his gaze from the man. He felt as if the rider were calling to him, demanding something. He shivered and felt a great relief when, at last, the dark stranger turned his mount and vanished over the hill.

“You mustn’t stand in this wind,” Pen said.

“What?”

“The wind, Tristan. You must come out of the wind.”

“You’re sure you know him not.”

“Upon mine honor,” she said. “Now come.”

He allowed her to escort him to the outer bailey, where he inspected the brewhouse, the thatched barn and stables, the dovecote, and the smithy. What he noticed was that the castle and its buildings were more than half empty. No one had mucked out the barn yet or lit the fire in the smithy. Pen seemed unconcerned with this laxity. They stepped out of the dovecote and rounded a haystack on their way to the chapel in the inner bailey. Tristan glanced at the quiet smithy.

“Where is the armory?”

Pen hesitated under the rounded arch of the chapel doorway. “The armory?”

“You must have a place to store weapons.”

He eyed her as she seemed to hold her breath.

“Oh, yes, the armory. Yes, the armory.” Pen waved her arm, indicating the surrounding wall and its towers. “It’s in one of the towers somewhere.”

“You didn’t show it to me.”

“We can see it some other time.”

Pen opened the chapel door, but he grabbed it to prevent her from entering.

“I desire to see it now,” he said.

“Um, I’ve lost the key.”

He glanced at the ring of keys that hung from a chain about her waist. When she walked, they clicked and tinkled as her hips swayed. He’d come to link that sound with her, and usually listened for it when he wasn’t with her.

“Mean you that of all those keys, not one fits the armory?”

“Not a one,” she said with a tense smile. “No doubt I’ll find it eventually.”

She tried to open the door again, but he pressed it closed and slipped between her and the portal.

“Pen, I need a sword.”

“Fie, Tristan. You’re not well yet to need a sword, and most like you won’t know how to use it.”

He said softly, “I know.”

“Well then,” she said with another too-bright smile, “we’ll find one for you eventually.”

“Where?”

“Oh, there are some somewhere.”

“No, you obstinate, there are none.” He leaned down to hold her gaze with his. “Not even hanging in the hall over the fireplace, not in the gatehouse, where they should be, not in my chamber, or any other chamber of the keep. The arms rooms in the guard towers are empty of blades except for halberds and pikes. The only blades I have seen are kitchen knives and the like. What kind of castle is this that there are no swords or daggers in it, Mistress Fairfax?”

Pen tried to dig the toe of her shoe into the flagstones. “Saints, Tristan, are there none? What a marvel.” Her head darted to the side, and she eyed him. “But then, none of my folk can use a sword. That’s why I gave Dibbler and the others pikes and halberds.”

“Nevertheless, I want a sword.” There it was again, that changeable quality that so intrigued and irked him. He refused to answer her smiles and quips, and continued to stare at her. “Take me to the armory.”

Breaking the lock of their gazes, Pen gestured at the stained glass rose window above the door. “Like you our chapel? It’s much newer than the one in the keep, of course.”

He frowned at her as she chattered. Surely she wasn’t trying to keep him a prisoner. The idea was absurd. He caught her arm and prevented her from opening the chapel door.

“I want a sword, mistress.” He didn’t mention that seeing the stranger just now had made him all the more eager to find one. “I may not know who I am, but I know I use a sword and need practice before I lose my skill. And don’t bother telling me there are none. No castles lack swords. And after you’ve found one, you may tell me why there are almost no weapons of any kind in this moidering pile.”

Holding on to Pen when she was disturbed was like holding the wings of a butterfly. She fluttered and dipped and swayed and danced on her toes until she realized he wasn’t going to release her. Then she settled and began chewing her lower lip while she looked at the flagstones, the ground in the bailey, the foundation of the chapel.

“Well?” he said. She muttered something, but he couldn’t hear her. “What?”

“I said no.”

A moment passed while he accustomed himself to the idea that she refused him. “God’s breath!”

“Prithee calm yourself.”

“God’s eyeballs! Jesu give me patience.”

He released her, then began to back her into the chapel door, where she bumped her head. Shaking a finger at her, he raised his voice.

“By the cross, no woman sets herself up as my master. You have until this evening to produce the key to the armory. Tomorrow I’ll find it and break down the door.”

Turning away from Pen, he stalked across the courtyard without giving another glance to the woman he so desired and who had saved his life.

Pen remained at the chapel entrance when Tristan had gone. Near to bursting with conflicting urges, she wanted to strike him, but she also wanted to beg him to try to seduce her again. Surely it was a sin to feel so … so heated about a man.

She paced beneath the rounded arch and wished she could scream until her voice echoed off the Highcliffe towers. She’d been right from the first. Young men brought peril. Tristan was already driving her mad with his assault on her senses; now he wanted a sword. She didn’t know anymore which was the most dangerous—his passion or his desire for a weapon. She was still shaking in reaction to how he’d stalked her in the gatehouse. What was she to do? Tangling and untangling her fingers in the folds of her skirts, she strained to think of some way to prevent him from obtaining a sword.

Her heart beat faster with each step, and she tried not to think about the first time she’d touched a sword and been consumed. It had been soon after she had experienced her first monthly time, when she’d begun to realize that something odd was happening to her, something more than simply becoming a woman. Her father had been cleaning his sword, and she’d touched
it by chance when handing him a clean rag with which to polish it.

A jolt of burning cold leapt from the blade to her fingers and arced from her hand to her chest and then to her mind. In an instant she exploded into a different place—a dark, confined place that smelled like metal, leather, and sweat—and she was so frightened that she nearly relieved herself. Her head was encased in metal, and she couldn’t move it well. Narrow rectangular slits limited her vision, and what she could see was men fighting and dying.

She glimpsed the standards of Clarence, Gloucester, Norfolk, and Buckingham. A riderless horse galloped by, nearly toppling her. She raised her arm, and heard the click of metal. She looked at her hand. It was encased in a gauntlet of carefully articulated metal plates that fitted the shape of her hand exactly. And in her hand rested the sword. She heard a scream and turned.

A knight on an armored destrier charged at her. His sallet helmet flashed in sunlight as he raised his sword and brought it down at her. Somehow she knew she had to kneel at the last moment and aim the point of her sword up.

Terrified, she waited until the knight was upon her. She knelt. Gleaming metal plates slid smoothly—and shoved the blade up, underneath the man’s arm between the breastplate and pauldron, where only gussets of chain mail protected vulnerable flesh. The point pierced the chain mail. She sprang up, driving the blade home.

The momentum of the destrier jerked the sword and her along with it. She flew after the horse and its dying rider, then yanked the blade free. The sudden release of the sword sent her off balance, and she toppled onto
her back. Terror seized her as her padded head banged around inside the helmet. Although made to fit her, the weight of the armor slowed her somewhat.