The Temptation (The Medieval Knights Series) (16 page)

He stood in his linen, his hair dark with water and brushing the tops of his shoulders. He stood, his masculinity an assault she could feel in her very bones, turning her heart to water, melting her joints to wax. The sight of him was a battering ram to her defenses; his words were arrows that pierced her heart and her resolve. Yet she stood and prayed for deliverance. God would answer. God was true.

"I will kneel at your feet. I will lift the hems of your very pretty green pelisse and your fine rose bliaut, tangling them in my grasp. I will grasp the hem in my hands, lifting it softly. You will feel the slightest brush of air, first on your ankles and then on your calves as I raise it, raise it, raise it to your knees. When I see your knees, I will be overcome and I will lean forward to kiss one perfect knee. You will tremble and you will shift your weight from foot to foot. You will duck your head and sigh, yet I will hear you and I will smile. You make me smile, did you know that, Elsbeth? You have the rare ability to make me smile."

"You laugh at me," she said, her voice a croak. The images he painted were too strong. He was too adept with words; it was his gravest fault.

He took a step toward her, the linen moving about his feet "I do not," he said. "Believe that. If you believe nothing else, believe that. I would not wound you even with a misplaced laugh. You simply ease my heart, that is all. And yet it is so much."

"Your words... you have too many words," she said.

"You are right. I use words because you have stopped my deeds. I would show you what I want for both of us, yet my hands are stopped against your iron will. Only my words are left. Will you take those from me, too, and leave me stripped of all the ways a man may win a woman's heart?"

"You have my body, my lands, my riches. What need have you for my heart?"

"I want all of you, Elsbeth," he said, his face suddenly intent. "Without your heart, all else is dross."

She saw another side of him then, another besides the grinning, pleasant face he wore for all the world and his wife to see. He was capable of much more than smiles, this man from Jerusalem, but what that meant for her, she did not know. His smiles had all but undone her.

"Let me touch you," he said, dropping to his knees at her feet. The fire was behind her, yet it was cold and dark compared to the heat and light of Hugh.

"You ask my leave?"

"Nay, I beg it," he said, his voice a throaty murmur.

Too many words, and all of them perfectly designed to cast her into a fall from which there was no rescue. She had no weapons against such temptation. When her courses stopped, she would fall. She was walking to her very death and could not seem to turn aside.

"Touch me, then," she said and did not recognize the voice as hers.

He lifted her skirts as he had predicted. The air touched her ankles, her calves, her knees, yet she felt no cool draft; all was heat and fire and longing. Her very blood pulsed out of her, pushed by her desire. She was defiled, disgraced, and still he lifted her skirts and still she let him, gasping her longing. Lost in smothered desire.

Lost.

"Is it not as I said?" he asked her, his breath on her legs, his head near her thighs.

It was all as he said. Every word beat against her mind as his eyes devoured her, his hands caressed her. Where was her sanctuary from such an assault?

"No higher," she said, trying to back away from his hands. The fire was behind her; she had nowhere to go.

"Nay?" he said, looking up at her as he held her skirts bunched in his hands. His eyes were shaded by the spikes of his lashes. He looked as wild as any cat "Then I will wash what I have revealed."

Hugh took the cloth she had used on him and rubbed her legs with it, from ankle to knee, in soft, slow strokes. The water was only a little warm and the room was cool, even with the fire at her back; her legs shivered as he wet them, and she trembled, as he had said she would.

He rinsed the cloth in the tub and then touched her again, more slowly, caressing rather than washing. And higher. Higher, though she had said nay to that. She did not say nay now. His hand stroked upward, past knee to thigh, to the very joining of her thighs. To the very padding that shielded and protected her.

"You are so hot, Elsbeth. I had not thought the fire was so high and hot as that, but you prove me wrong. Your skin burns under my hand. Without this cloth to shield me, I would be scorched and blistered."

Nay, she was not hot. She shivered and trembled. Her heart shook within her ribs. She could not draw a breath without a gasp to mark it.

"Open for me," he said, the cloth high up on her thigh. Her legs were pressed together, closed against him, closed against the blood that flowed out of her. Which did she want more, her blood or his touch? She did not know. She had fallen that far.

She did not know which was blessing and which was curse.

"Open," he repeated, his breath soft against her thigh. His hair was drying, golden and shining against her skin.

She opened for him, just a bit. Just a slight shifting of her feet. She could not see anything but the golden halo of his hair. She could not think beyond his next touch, his next stroke against her thigh. She could not even think to pray.

His hand stroked up the inside of her thigh, his fingertips just brushing the wadding of her protection. His hand came away, sheathed in white linen touched by a tint of red.

"You bleed," he said.

"Aye," she said, swaying on her feet, the fire at her back and the fire between her legs consuming her. She laid a hand upon his shoulder, steadying herself. "I told you."

"Aye, and I believed. Still, I would cleanse you as best I may."

He stroked again and turned her. He turned her so that her back was to him, her skirts left to fall in front so that her posterior was exposed to his sight and to his touch.

"Nay. Enough," she said.

Now she was begging and she had no will to stand on pride. He was destroying her. Gently, softly destroying her. She would have no will left to fight if he did not stop now.

"Not enough," he said, and she could feel his breath on her derriere. She clenched against the sensation and felt the pulsebeat of desire pound within her core. "Never enough," he said. "You are mine. I want all of you. Even the blood. Even your shame. Give me all and I will be content."

"You said no harm."

"I will not harm. I have not harmed. I have barely touched," he said, stroking her derriere with the cloth, edging his hand between her cheeks, running his damp hand down the inside of her thigh.

"You have touched all," she said, gasping, trying to drop her skirts. He held them fast and laughed.

"Spoken like a maiden. When this time of constraint has passed, you shall learn the difference, little one. I will have all of you. You will give me all of you."

"Nay," she said, turning within his arms, facing him, the enemy to her vow.

"And you will want all of me," he said, pulling her down to kneel in front of him. "'Tis the way of marriage, Elsbeth. One body, one flesh, as the Lord commands. Will you disobey?"

"I will follow God's path for me," she said, knowing her meaning was different from his.

"As will I," he said. "We can do no more. We must do no less," he said, throwing the blood-tinged cloth into the tub, where it floated softly before sinking to disappear in the dark shadows of the water. "I torment myself. To touch you, lay my hands upon you, dwell upon your beauty, is torment when I cannot have you. When I know that you do not want me... yet."

He was wrong. She wanted him. It was her torment. She did want him yet she would never choose to have him.

Even kneeling as they were, he was taller by a head. His heart beat in his breast, and she could count the beats beneath his golden skin. He had very little body hair, just a thin line that hovered low on his torso, trailing down to his manhood, darkening as it went. His cloth held about his hips, for which she thanked God most profoundly. A thin barrier, yet welcome.

"Do not ask for what I cannot give," she said, closing her eyes against the vision of him.

He pressed her head to his chest, comforting her, running his hand down the long fall of her hair.

"I will not," he said, and she was comforted. Until he added, "You will want to give me all. I will see to that."

Chapter 8

"The timing was most unfortunate."

"God is the master of lime and His will made perfect by it. I am not constrained nor concerned. All will be well."

Gautier looked at his daughter's husband. All would be well? Only a Levantine would find a bleeding and unclean wife to be a matter of no concern. Perhaps he did not have it in him to take a woman. The Poulains were soft, as were all who were born within the shadow of the holy sepulcher and lived out their days on the rim of the Great Sea. They smelled too sweet to be men of blood. They loved the bath, not battle. They lived in cities behind thick walls of stone; when did they battle but over the choice of damask for their bedhangings?

Hugh of Jerusalem was all too fit a match for his prayerful daughter. They could well pray each other into heaven before this marriage was consummated, which would not serve. He needed this marriage. He had arranged it most carefully. If not for Elsbeth's flux and Hugh's fear of blood, all would have been settled by now. If Hugh would only lift his fleshy sword and poke it into his daughter, the matter could be set to rest.

Gautier looked askance at his newfound son. He looked a pretty man, mayhap too pretty to do his service to a maid. There were many tales told of the men of the Levant, tales that would not serve his goals. It was certain that Elsbeth would not encourage him, not with Ardeth's counsel shaping her as it did. This marriage must be consummated, sealed and set. 'Twas up to Hugh to do his part. It was up to him to point the Poulain in the right direction.

If Hugh could not manage to find his way into Elsbeth, securing her as his, then Gautier must consider other means for gaining what he sought from this union. He was not a man to shrink from any course. Nay, he was a man made for anything.

"You are confident," Gautier said. "I must take comfort in that, drinking of your confidence."

"Your confidence is not misplaced," Hugh said. "All
will
be well."

Gautier shrugged. "She is most devout. She will not welcome you, I fear," Gautier said.

"To be devout is no sin," Hugh said, looking over the curtain wall to the fields below. They walked the battlements, seeking fresher air than that to be found in the still confines of the bailey. "I am most pleased by Elsbeth. You did not speak false concerning her."

"I did not speak false on anything," Gautier said, ignoring the fields below, studying Hugh instead.

"That pleases me as well," Hugh said lightly, "and I did not doubt but that you spoke true. Your good name has traveled far, even to Outremer."

"That is well. I have done good service in my life, and while my reward will surely find me in heaven, to be praised on earth is equally satisfying."

To be praised on earth was all the praise a man would get, his eternal praise robbed to feed it, according to the Gospels. But if Gautier did not know his Scriptures, Hugh would not be the light to blind him with the truth.

They had an agreement, the two of them. An agreement which hinged on Elsbeth. Knowing her better, knowing her father better, made the agreement more unpleasant to him, yet he would not disappoint Baldwin. Baldwin and Jerusalem needed him to succeed in this distant and cold land, and so he would succeed.

He would not disappoint. He would not fail. It was well within his power to achieve all ends, though his heart did not yearn for the battle ahead. Nay, his heart had been touched by Elsbeth and, once touched, was changed.

He had not expected that. He had come to take a wife, but he had not come to find his life changed. It was unwelcome, what she aroused in him: an urge to protect and defend which had nothing of Baldwin in it. The soft warmth he felt when he made her smile was surprising. She did not smile often, that he knew. He felt like the victor of a great battle with every smile won from her shuttered heart.

Still, a man did his duty and asked his heart to bear the burden of it. He was Poulain. He knew where his loyalty lay. God would see to Elsbeth if men failed her, as they surely would.

"Does she know yet that you stay at Warkham?" Gautier asked, pulling his cloak tighter against a sudden sodden gust.

"Nay, she does not know she will not see Sunnandune. Yet, until her flux is past we must stay where we are. Travel would be difficult as it stands now with her. She will not wonder at it."

Gautier laughed and looked up at the sky. "All the world must seem wet and unwelcoming to you now, Hugh. Take another woman of my holding to ease your wait. I will not look amiss on such an act. A man's needs must be met elsewhere when his wife rains blood upon the sheets."

"Do not men welcome rain?" Hugh said, pulling his own cloak about him, cloaking his tongue in courtesy. "Elsbeth is not unwelcoming, she is simply unable. I can wait for Elsbeth and will wait for her. I need no other woman. Patience, Lord Gautier."