With Her Kiss (Swords of Passion) (12 page)

Kat stepped closer to the monk, entranced that his voice now reminded her of her days in the dungeon. Nay. One day in the dungeon. Why?

“Therefore, when my Lord St Claire asked me to assist him in her rescue—”

John stepped right in front of the little man in black robes and put his nose nearly against his. “You helped him?”

“I did, Sire.”

“You shall pay for that.”

“Not unless you wish to have the Holy See extend your excommunication. This time for failure to observe the sanctity of clerics.”

John had been excommunicated from the love of God and the Pope last year for his failure to observe the right of the Pope to appoint whom he wished to posts in England. The edict, it was well known, wore on John’s marriage to a lady who valued her relationship with Rome. The ruling also alienated many Englishmen from the Crown, to the point that many refused to render unto this Caesar what was his and kept the taxes to render unto the Church what they deemed just.

John muttered a curse. “How so?”

The monk lowered his gaze, but his words were anything but demure. “It is profane for the lady to remain with you, Sire.”

“Profane?” John barked in laughter.

“Aye. The lady must return to the protection of Lord St Claire.”

Kat captured Geoffrey’s gaze at that moment and knew from his self-possession, his self-assurance that he would win this point. But why? How?

“Sire, the lady is my Lord St Claire’s wife.”

“Wife!” John laughed, outraged.

Wife?
Kat put a hand to her brow. The monk’s voice. The baritone that drifted in and out of her memory of those minutes in the dungeon.
He married me to Geoffrey!

“I have here the official writ by my hand, my lord.” The monk extended a scroll to John who waved it away.

“You expect me to believe this?”

The monk licked his lips and nodded. “I had a witness to the rite.”

Who? Who else was there?
Kat squeezed her eyes shut attempting to clear her memory of that dreadful night.

“Who?” John demanded

“Me,” said Reginald, his joy in his statement curving his mouth.

Geoffrey stared at John.

“I sent papers to Rome documenting this, Sire. The Pope should receive them, if the seas are calm, within days.”

Geoffrey gave a half-smile of satisfaction. “And since I was once a Crusader for his Holiness the Pope’s kingdom on earth, he will bless my union with the Lady Harleigh quickly.”

John seemed drained of thought, looking from monk to lady to lord to man at arms.

A guard appeared at the entrance. “Sire.”

“Aye. What news, man, of Lord St Claire’s supporters?”

“Sire, we count as many as four hundred in the forest.”

“Four hundred,” John repeated as if he had enjoyed too much wine. “Four hundred.”

“Aye, Sire. Mayhap more coming if we are accurate about a long line of footmen and pike men on the northeast road.”

John spun towards Kat, his nose twitching. “Ever were you a thorn in my side. Why I would care to have such a witch in my bed is a mystery.”

Hope danced in her heart.

“Get out.”

She moved to Geoffrey’s side, her fingers twining in his for the assurance she never hoped to have again.

“Get out!”

“Sire.” The monk bowed and stepped backwards out of the tent.

Geoffrey stared at John. “I give you no obeisance. Besides,” he spat, “I do not trust you to not stab us in the back.”

“Leave now, St Claire. Insult me more and you will not leave at all!”

Geoffrey smiled a reedy acknowledgement. Then he backed out of his King’s presence.

Until they were well inside Chepstow’s keep and up into her solar, Katherine did not let go her husband’s hand.

And when they stood, toe to toe, his hands around her waist, she lifted her face and kissed him with a relief she could not define. The King had made her life a living hell for so many years that to have even a small reprieve was bliss.

“How did you think to take a monk with you to rescue me?”

“If you did not need your last rites, I swore you would have those to become my wedded wife.”

“And you brought the monk with you here? How bright of you to know you would need him.”

“Against John, one needs every weapon available.”

She hugged him close, her cheek against his chest. “He will change his mind. Come after us. We must leave, you do realise?” She looked up at him in alarm.

“I do. We go to Ireland. Our life will be more rugged there. My lands are smaller than at Winton. But we will survive and we will be together.”

“You and I,” she said then giggled. “And Matthew.”

Geoffrey snuggled her closer, his face alight with mischief now. “And perhaps in time there will be others to join us.”

“Oh, such as your men at arms?” she teased him. In truth, she knew he hoped for children from their new and joyous union. “Other children may be impossible, my husband.”

“I have known many impossible feats in my time, madam. If we have children, I say they come from our devotion and our insatiable desire for each other. If we have no more, I say I have all of them rolled into one fine young man. Our heir.”

She hugged him. “As years pass, we three will need a retinue. John is relentless.”

“Do not fear. I have planned to bring my household servants to join us. I like them one and all. And I would rather pay to ship them with us than to hear that John in his vengeance has rounded them up to torture and slay them.”

“A wise idea. And we should do the same for my staff, too.”

He stroked her back. “I have the coin for that.”

“How well you have prepared.”

“Would that I could hire a whole fleet of ships and send all John’s subjects to Ireland.”

“Aye, he’s not been successful there in persuading them to love him.”

“Bah!” He laughed. “We could send all the English to Irish shores.”

She shook her head. “They would never do it.”

Geoffrey splayed his fingers into her hair. “He will pass away one day.”

“May it please God soon,” she whispered.

“Until then,” he said, “we go far away where his reach is frail.”

“And there for the time we have left to each other, you will be mine and I yours.”

“As man and wife, as we were always meant to be.”

Also available from Total-E-Bound Publishing:

His Delectable Cook

Cerise DeLand

Excerpt

Chapter One

Bess Deveraux stood before her new employer, prim as a blushing bride, which she most definitely was not, and proud as the virago she wished to become. And all because the man she faced was precisely the type of master she had yearned for since she’d first discovered the joys her body could give her six long years ago. He embodied all the essential qualities she desired in a lord and master—he was handsome, self-possessed, filthy rich and scandal-ridden. At the moment, he was also astonished at her appearance before him. The tick in his left cheek told that tale.

“Mrs O’Brien assures me you are qualified for my household.” Lord Taryn Wentworth sat, loose-boned and maddeningly louche, in a large leather chair, examining her from across his sun-dappled library. The rogue controlled himself so well—too well. Far beyond Bess’ expectations. After all, she knew he had always hated surprises, especially ones she’d concocted.

Bess flushed with pride. Convincing the acerbic housekeeper to choose Bess for the cook’s position had been quite the gauntlet, but she had succeeded. The servant had riddled her with questions for hours about her previous experience and employers.

“She informs me you are experienced with supper parties and balls.” Crossing one long, well-muscled leg over the other, Wentworth pursed his full lips together as his searing sapphire eyes assessed her chin, her throat and her bosom in the cook’s shapeless white attire.

At his gravelly bass voice, Bess refrained from shifting on her feet as her nipples peaked high and hard against the rough cotton of her new uniform. She’d been right not to have donned a corset this morning. Nor worn any pantalets. After all, she had taken this position to be free of all social restraints.

“Bess! Do answer his lordship,” Mrs O’Brien chastised her to respond to the man who had recently inherited this Mayfair house, an older pile in Dorset, an earldom and twenty thousand a year income.

Bess locked eyes with him, the rogue. “I was not aware it was a question.”

“Careful, girl,” O’Brien growled.

Bess caught his lordship fighting a smile. “Yes, of course. Pardon me, Went—”
No, not so familiar, Bess!
“Sorry, my lord. I am very accomplished at preparing party menus. Game, beef, puddings.”

“Red snapper?”

Bess suppressed a chuckle at his lewd reference. How like the scoundrel to try to make her laugh. “I have it on good authority that my fish is superbly prepared. Always in a savoury sauce.”

He rubbed his lower lip with the tip of one index finger. “How are your sweet things?”

When properly prepared?
“They melt in your mouth.”

“Tempting,” he conceded, with a tour of her body from generous breasts to tiny waist and the length of her legs. She had heard his eyes could scald and titillate. Her cunny swelled with the proof. “And what of your cakes? Do you work with chocolate?”

“I can bake one for you, my lord.”

“Frosted?”

Irritable and commanding this morning, are we, my lord Wentworth? Hmm.
“Of course. Marzipan. Vanilla glaze. Whatever you—”

“What do you do with strawberries? Peaches?”

The devil
. Her nipples pebbled like strawberries. Eager to have those luscious lips of his sucking them. And her peaches? She squeezed her pussy walls together. Yes. Her peaches were plump and ready to be bitten into. “Such delicacies, I offer ripe and sugared with—”

“Ices?” He cut her off with a narrowing of his sparkling eyes and a shift in his chair.

Uncomfortable, my lord? This is your fault, you realise. You did ask.
“Yes. Sculptured, my lord. Swans, birds and—”

“I see,” he said, though what he was looking at was her nipples against the muslin uniform. “Where did you learn to carve ice?”

“In the house where I grew up, my dearest friend was the cook.”

His cool façade fell from his face at hearing this titbit. “Was your friend, the sculptress, also expert with her dishes?”

“A fine chef, my lord. My father became enchanted with her finesse and claimed no one could make a soufflé that compared. I learnt much from her.”

“Such as?”

Ah. You taunt me at your own risk, Wentworth.
“She declared if one fed a man what he loved, he would return, hungry forevermore.”

“Astute of her.” Over the shock of gazing at her face and form he grew more relaxed. Even jovial.

“True, my lord.” Bess rocked back on her heels, bolder now that she had him in conversation. “She was most particular instructing me on how to prepare any organ from a large animal, most especially his brain.”

He arched an eyebrow at her. “For example, what?”

“How to tenderise a big piece of meat.” She used her hands, illustrating her passion to pull and draw on one specific part of a male animal.

O’Brien cleared her throat.

Bess clasped her hands behind her back, rising on her toes and thrusting out her heavy breasts. “I roast a succulent duck, as well. Do you like duck, my lord?”

“I appreciate all things succulent, Bess.” He flashed a smile at her, a rueful twitch of that libertine’s mouth. One Bess had to trace and taste very soon. “Leave us, Mrs O’Brien.”

“My lord, I depart here in the morning for the house in Dorset as you requested,” the housekeeper bit off her words, miffed at her dismissal from this interview. “But I have not yet discussed the menu with her for tomorrow evening, and with a new butler and footman—”

“I will tell her what to serve.” Wentworth waved the woman towards the door, though his gaze was locked on Bess’. “She will inform you after I am done with her. You may go to your duties, Mrs O’Brien.”

Bess pressed her thighs together. Her cunny pulsed at the prospect of being alone with her lord so soon after being hired. Quivering with anticipation, she gripped her hands together before her while the housekeeper hemmed and hawed, then turned on her heel to sail from the library.

When the door clicked shut, Wentworth crooked a finger at her. “Come closer, Bess. Afraid I bite? I do occasionally when compelled by surprise—or disobedience. But then, I suspect you knew that. Heard tales of me, have you?”

“Yes, sir.”
The ton is awash in them. Though I knew the older ones of your outlandish past, one dear friend of mine has filled my head with many of the new tales. Your sudden ascension to this earldom. Your personal fortune, made from your trade out of Jamaica. Your penchant for risqué gentlemen’s clubs. The woman you adored and the love affair that failed so tragically. I have learnt them all, rejoiced with you, save for that latter story which we might amend with a new conclusion.

“Perhaps you don’t know enough about me to work for me.”

“I do, sir. I wish to work for no one else.”

“Well, then, come. Stand just…here,” he instructed, both feet to the floor now, straightening in his chair and widening his knees. He pointed between his legs, her body so near to his that she inhaled his scent. Bergamot and musk.
Mingling with the heady fragrances of my own juices dribbling from my drenched pussy.

She swallowed hard, the sound reverberating in her head. Her head spinning with desire to touch him, she did not dare to look him in the eye. She had promised herself that she would steal her courage for this position as his cook, give him his prerogatives as her master and let him do as he would. His reputation had preceded him. The newest claimant to the name Wentworth was the one any gossip equated with rakehell. The heartbreaker of virgins. Debaucher of widows. Yet whispers declared he pined for one woman who was beyond his reach and this was the reason that his recent indulgences in houses of ill repute were oddly only that of observation.

“Turn up your palms.”

She did and he stroked her flesh with the backs of his nails, frissons of delight shooting up her arms.

“You have such elegant fingers. What happened here?” He circled a dark scar beneath her index finger.

“I was clumsy with a pot and burned myself.”

“With such fine hands, you must be more careful. What else do you do with these elegant fingers, Bess?”

“I play,” she managed to get out. The housekeeper had warned her to answer any question put to her by her new master with only the truth and to be quick about it.

“What?” His touch was soft, rhythmic.

“Chess. The pianoforte.”

“And?” he insisted. “Any other instrument?”

“Anything your lordship wishes.”

He left off stroking her hands and sat back for long minutes when she dared not move. “O’Brien tells me you have a reference from an employer in Lancashire.”

My past? Yes, you would want to know, wouldn’t you?
“This is true. I was cook to Baron Charles Mowbray and his wife, my lord.”

“For how long, Bess?”

“Five years and two months.” Her voice broke, she could barely speak the words that told of her life before that. “The baron and his wife were very good to me, my lord. Taking me on my word that I was an accomplished cook though I had no previous employment.”

“So then, before that, Bess, where were you? Tell me,” he ground out, raw despair a palpable sorrow in his voice.

“My two guardians had shut me up in a cottage near Berwick.”

He cursed roundly beneath his breath.

“They fed me laudanum and said I was mad, then set a guard on me.”

His expression grew feral, his nostrils flaring, his teeth bared. “Do you still eat opium, Bess?”

“No, my lord. I never liked the stuff.”

His fierce blue gaze pierced her own. “And are you mad, Bess?”

She shook her head vigorously. “Never, my lord. Never.”

“And you escaped from these guardians,” he marvelled.

“I did. For the years I was with Baron Mowbray, I was well hidden away.” She straightened her back. “But before I came to you, I went to see them and showed them I have defied them.”

His mouth fell open, a look of awe and horror straining his expression. “Bold of you, Bess.”

“I would not let them take my life away from me. They had taken—” She bit her trembling lower lip. “They had taken so much else from me.”

“And why now are you here with me, Bess?”

“The gossips said you were come here as the new earl, the oldest natural heir to the Wentworth titles and lands. I heard you sought restitution from those who had done you ill and I wanted to work for such a master. I came as quickly as I could.”

He slid his big warm hands up to her forearms, his touch one that proclaimed he treasured her form. As if she scorched his flesh, he let go and sat back. “I am honoured, Bess, to have such a determined woman in my household.”

She stared into his heavy-lidded eyes, wishing she might show him how thrilled she was to have learnt of his very existence.

His eyebrows knitted, a vulnerable tenderness in his countenance. “Are you not too beautiful to work here hidden away in my downstairs kitchen?”

“I am thrilled you think so.”
That I retain my looks after all I have endured makes my heart sing.