The Marsh King's Daughter (33 page)

Read The Marsh King's Daughter Online

Authors: Elizabeth Chadwick

Tags: #Fiction, #Historical

BOOK: The Marsh King's Daughter
7.69Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

At last Nicholas freed the key. For a moment neither of them moved, then he drew a shuddering breath and turned back to the chest. Miriel closed her eyes and swallowed. Jesu, Jesu. If this was lust then it was delicious and she was utterly unprepared for what it was doing to her bones and body, melting them, drugging her reason. The attraction she had felt for Robert paled to insignificance when compared with this. She was not just playing with fire. She was well and truly in it and burning up.

Nicholas removed rolls of parchment from the chest. He took out ink and quills, a bradawl and trimming knife. Bags of tallies and a squared counting cloth. He peeled back a lining of felted fleece to reveal the chiselled oak base, made from two planks so securely pegged together that they seemed like one whole. Around the outside, they were secured by firm iron bands crowned by a fleur-de-lis design. Despite its outward appearance everything fitted flush and perfectly, without warping or fault of design.

'I had it made when I married Gerbert,' she said, seeking to dilute the gathering sensations with words.

'But not for your linens, I'll warrant.' Nicholas sat back on his heels to consider the chest and all its dimensions. There was nothing about the internal structure to suggest a hidden compartment, and yet he was positive that she had brought him here with the intention of showing him the regalia. So, where was it? Behind him he was more than conscious of her rapid breathing. For two pins he would have abandoned the coffer and dragged her into his arms there and then. But the game had to be played out to his conclusion. He forced himself to concentrate.

'Well?' she said, and he heard a note of triumph in her voice. 'Do you yield?'

Nicholas snorted. 'Either you know me better than that and the remark is no more than a goad,' he said, 'or you do not know me at all.' He stared at the chest, willing the damned thing to give up its secret, knowing that so much more depended on the moment than the discovery of the crown. If not inside or on top, then what about beneath? He slipped his hand under the chest and felt along the smooth wooden surface. Nothing. Miriel's breathing stopped. Nicholas felt further, and suddenly his fingers encountered an upright wooden peg. He twisted it to the horizontal and a compartment door fell open, giving access to a shelf running the length of the chest. And there was an object on that shelf.

'Well?' he demanded, twisting to grin at her over his shoulder. 'Which was it - a goad, or ignorance?' Delicately he withdrew Mathilda's crown in its silk wrappings.

'Neither.' She clenched her fists in her gown, obviously longing to snatch the object out of his hands, but holding herself in check.

'Then what?'

'A test, to see what you would do.' 'For your amusement?'

'No. To discover how much of my knowledge of you was quicksand, and how much solid fact.' Her voice emerged as a hoarse whisper.

Nicholas unwrapped the crown from its silks and gazed upon the soft gleam of gold and jewels, whose beguilement had almost cost his life. 'And your conclusion?'

She drew a trembling breath. 'That you are a rock, and I am the one drowning in quicksand.'

There was no mistaking what he heard in her voice. Gently he set the gold down upon the chest and turned round. 'Then we are drowning together,' he said, and this time he did pull her into his arms.

There was the tiniest moment of resistance, like a swimmer fighting against an inexorable tide, and then she yielded, her body melting against his. She was slender and supple, pliant in his arms, but not submissive. As his mouth descended on hers, she curled her fingers in his hair, drawing him down closer. The kiss seemed to go on forever, until his jaw ached and his head was whirling from lack of breath. There was a tender pressure in his groin, and he pulled her haunches against his, enhancing the sensation, until it was so exquisite that he groaned aloud, and had to tear his lips from hers to gasp for air.

She was gasping too, and her eyes were aglow. She rubbed against him, and any intention Nicholas had possessed of stopping, any last flicker of conscience, was subdued by a welter of lust and need, and a desire that had lain so long at the back of his mind that its surfacing was a tidal wave against which all reason was helpless.

In the dim light of the candle lantern and the gleaming presence of the royal crown of an empress, he laid his cloak upon the ground and drew Miriel down with him on to its soft fur lining.

With shaking hands, he unpinned her wimple and pulled it from the sheen of her silky hair, now regrown below her shoulders. She was another man's wife, but he did not associate what they were doing with committing adultery. He had been hers since the day she found him on the marsh, and she had been his since the moment she took off with the crown that now presided over this rite of possession.

'This is madness,' she whispered, but did not relinquish her grip on him. Almost feverishly, her fingers sought beneath his tunic and shirt for his naked skin. He sensed an urgency stronger than his own, bordering on desperation. It was as if that now she had made up her mind, she was determined to arrive at the core of the act without pause for dalliance and sweet words along the way. Dazzled, eager himself, Nicholas took his pace from hers. It was the work of a moment to push up her gown and free himself from his braies, to cover her and thrust into her body.

He felt her tense around him, gripping tight, and heard her gasp through clenched teeth. Her nails gored him, and he knew it was not with the force of urgent passion.

Hips pressed flat, unmoving, he raised himself to look at her. 'I'm hurting you,' he said. 'I thought you were ready.'

Her eyes, which had been squeezed shut, opened and she gave him a puzzled stare. 'I am ready.' She reached up to stroke his face with her fingertips. 'I want to give you pleasure.'

'And so you are, but I want to give you joy in return.'

Her look of puzzlement increased and he realised with a jolt that she did not understand, that despite her marital duty to Robert Willoughby, she was still innocent, and had probably never known pleasure beyond the first stirrings, like a fire that had been improperly set and never kindled beyond a weak flame.

'Like this,' he said, and dipped his head gently to nibble her throat, her earlobes, the exquisite line of her jaw. Taking his weight on one arm, he used his other hand to stroke and fondle, laying the foundations of a blaze that would burn hot and true.

 

In the moist fug of The Green Bush, Robert was securing the future of his wool trade with bags of silver and whispered instructions to the scarred, powerfully muscled man seated opposite on the trestle. 'An accident, you understand, it must look like an accident.'

Serlo Redbeard, former common mercenary in King John's army, and now retired to occasional but better paid employment, closed his fist around the pouch of coins and nodded. 'You can trust me,' he said, exposing a handful of yellow stumps, worn almost down to the gum. The magnificent copper-coloured beard from which he took his name bushed around his face like a scarf. 'No one's ever traced the old weaver's disappearance to your door, have they?'

'No,' Robert said, looking dubious as he made wet ring marks on the trestle with his cup. Going out on a limb to obtain what he wanted had its dangers. While he was prepared to accept them, his confidence had been shaken by the arrogance of de la Pole who had treated him as being of less significance than a fly. Nigel Fuller and the old weaver had been easy meat. Maurice de la Pole was somewhat larger prey and the risks correspondingly greater.

'Of course, if you don't trust me, you can always commission someone else to do the task for you.' Serlo Redbeard offered the purse back to him.

'I never trust anyone further than my eyes can follow them,' Robert growled. 'You know as well as I do that if I went elsewhere, I would be increasing the danger to myself.'

Redbeard smirked, but the expression was swiftly wiped from his face as Robert continued, 'And to mitigate that, I would have to pay my new source double to be rid of you as well. Do not overestimate your worth, Master Redbeard. As long as you do your job and keep your place you are useful to me and your fee reflects the price I set on your abilities and your discretion. I hope we have an understanding.' He leaned forward, staring hard, until the other man nodded and looked away.

'Aye, master, we have an understanding.'

'Good. Come to me when it is done, and you will receive the other half of your wages.' He raised a warning forefinger as Redbeard stuffed the bag of silver into the pouch tied to his belt. 'Remember, I don't want it doing in the town.'

'Leave it to me, master. You'll have no cause for complaint, I swear.' Redbeard drained his cup and swaggered out.

Robert huddled over his cup and ordered a new flagon. He did not want to go home just yet. A vigorous tumble in bed with Miriel might ease his need, but he was in too much of a tumult to bear the thought of waiting until their guest departed.

Plotting murder was distasteful even if it was necessary and done by proxy. He looked at his hands, and for a moment was filled with the vision of his right one clamped over Gerbert's nose and mouth. That too had been necessary, a kindness in disguise. The old man had been on death's threshold. Better to help him on his way than let him linger in suffering within his seizure-paralysed body.

He shook his head like a man irritated at a cloud of summer midges and glanced round the alehouse until he caught the waiting eye of one of its whores, a full-breasted freckled blonde who went by the improbable name of Corisande. Still, the fact that she was capable of thinking up such a courtly name for herself meant that she was a class above the other Hildas and Aggies offering their wares in the establishment. Returning her stare, Robert held up a coin, rolling it between his fingers in a practised trick. Hands on hips, she sauntered over, and helped herself to the wine in his jug.

 

'Ah Jesu, ah God!' Miriel's voice was a breathless sob. She twisted and threshed beneath the coaxing of Nicholas's fingers and lips, the gentle flicking of his tongue. She had possessed no inkling that this was the blaze of which the kindling was truly capable, and she was being immolated, running with liquid gold, stabbed with gemstones of sharper sensation on the points of a crown. It was unbearable, she was dying. And still within her, Nicholas had not moved, except to accommodate her twists and struggles.

She arched her hips in a dual attempt to escape and yet retain the pleasure that was killing her. He murmured love words against her throat and began to move, slowly, languorously. Miriel clutched the fur lining of the cloak, and then she clutched him, muffling her cries against his shoulder, digging her nails into his spine. His pushes grew stronger and faster, but still restrained and measured. Miriel raised her thighs and clasped him. She heard herself gasping at him to make an end, that she could bear no more, and suddenly all the gemstones gathered in the small pleasure core of her loins and splintered into thousands of tiny gleaming shards.

For a long, long time there was nothing but the wild gasping of her breath, the thundering of her heart against her ribs, the dying ripples of sensation. Awareness returned in fragments. The cool fur of his cloak, the draught from the door on her tear-wet face, the gleam of the crown in the lantern light. It was an enormous risk they had taken, and yet she had no urge to make haste and clear the evidence from sight. Lassitude and contentment flowed into her on the aftermath of the pleasure. For the first time in her life, she was not sore, but soaring. She looked at Nicholas. At some point he had withdrawn from her, and now lay on his stomach, elbows propped, and a concerned and tender expression on his face.

She felt suddenly shy beneath his scrutiny, not at the intimacy of what they had done, but at having been so vulnerable before him, of having yielded all control into his keeping. And she was piqued to discover how remarkably composed he was. Conning over her own small but significant store of knowledge, she frowned.

'You gave me a gift beyond price, and yet you did not take your own pleasure,' she said.

He looked surprised for a moment, as if he had not expected her to be capable of such perception. Then he leaned over and gently fingered a stray tendril of hair from her face. 'Because, as you say, it was a gift, and without a price. I did not want to get you with child. God knows, we have taken risks enough as it is.'

She shook her head. 'You would not have got me with child. I know that I am barren. I have been wedded to Robert for almost a year and he claims his marital right twice a day on all the days that the Church permits. If I was going to quicken with a babe, it would have happened long ago.' She pulled a face. 'Sometimes I think it is God's punishment because I ran away from St Catherine's, but in truth it bothers me little and Robert says it is of no consequence to him. I have the independence to pursue my trade and no ties to bind me to the hearth. Nor do I have to face the danger of childbirth.' Turning her head, she nuzzled against Nicholas's warmth. 'But still, it was chivalrous of you. I doubt many men would have been so concerned.' She drew his head down and kissed him, tenderly at first, then with growing enthusiasm. Her hand slipped down his body, palm curving across his hip until she brushed the tip of his erection and heard him hiss. She was on familiar ground now, and the balance of control altered in her favour. She toyed with him as he had earlier toyed with her, varying speed and degree of caress until the muscles strained in his neck and he was as hard and tight as a wound crossbow in the hollow of her fist.

Other books

Paperweight by Meg Haston
Citizenchip by Wil Howitt
Dear Trustee by Mary Burchell
The Sword in the Tree by Clyde Robert Bulla
El coleccionista by Paul Cleave
What A Scoundrel Wants by Carrie Lofty