Wolf Bride (11 page)

‘Come on, this way! Is that the best you can do?’ he taunted her over his shoulder. ‘I’ve seen a nun on a donkey ride faster.’

‘Swine!’ she muttered, trying to persuade the mare to turn round and follow the stallion through the gap in the wall.

Lord Wolf had turned his horse and was making for the open fields to the north at an infuriatingly easy canter by the time she had galvanised her reluctant horse into a trot again.

He slowed his mount to a walk, waiting for her to catch up with him, then laughed at her flushed and breathless state.

‘I thought you said you could ride?’

Was he trying to make her lose her temper? Well, she would not give him the satisfaction. She counted to ten, then said sweetly, ‘I’m sorry, my lord. I didn’t realise you wanted a race.’

‘Oh, that was just a gentle start. We haven’t even galloped yet. Perhaps I should have carried you before me, not given you your own horse.’ He stroked the pommel of his leather saddle, his smile teasing. ‘There’s plenty of room for two, you know.’

Much to her chagrin, she felt a sudden rush of heat between her thighs at this suggestion. In her mind’s eye, she saw herself seated on the saddle before him, but facing him, her skirts raised, the two of them kissing and coupling urgently.

Eloise looked away at once, gulping in the cool morning air. Had she no shame?

His eyes narrowed on her face. ‘What is it? What’s the matter now?’

‘Nothing.’

Those sharp blue eyes of his saw far too much! To distract him, she glanced back the way they had come, shielding her eyes against the sun.

‘I can hardly see the manor house from here,’ she murmured, gazing back at the thatched roof of the dairy, half-shrouded by trees, and beyond that a milky trail of smoke from her father’s kitchens. The main house was invisible, hidden by a dip in the land. ‘I don’t know this area at all. But then Susannah and I were never permitted to ride beyond the North Field boundary as children.’

‘In case the wicked wolf and his son caught you and gobbled you up?’

‘Something like that,’ she replied drily, and risked a glance in his direction. Her pulse was still racing but her tone was deliberately cool, unbothered. He already thought her keen to bed him; he must never be allowed to guess what she had just been thinking, or she would die of shame. ‘Is that where you’re taking me today? To the wolf’s lair?’

‘Not quite. Though it is on my estate. It’s just a place I like to visit when I’m home.’

‘Is it far?’

‘Less than an hour’s ride.’ Their two horses were walking slowly side by side, his thigh pressed close to where she sat side-saddle. Her nerves were stretched thin as she tried to look unconcerned by such proximity, though in truth she had never before felt so light-headed in the presence of a man. He came to a halt and pointed to a striking cluster of trees on a hilltop in the distance, the fields around its base grazed by little white dots of sheep. ‘The other side of that hill.’

‘Then we had best get on,’ she muttered, and urged her mare into a trot, eager to get away from him.

He passed her easily, breaking into a canter. Rather than be sprayed with sods of turf, she let her mare’s head go, so that both horses were soon cantering side by side.

Wolf glanced at her, his eyes still narrowed in scrutiny, and she looked away. She guessed that he was trying to work out what had made her so uncomfortable back there.

It would only be a matter of time, she realised in dismay, before he guessed at her rising desire for him.

And then what?

Why had none of the love poems she had read ever mentioned the strength of a virgin’s desire?

Because they were all written by men, a voice jeered in her head.

They reached the far side of the tree-topped hill just after noon and stopped in a rough hollow, with boulders and sparse trees, and nobody else in sight. The sun was high overhead, surprisingly warm for February, and after the long ride Eloise was thirsty and in need of somewhere private to relieve herself. Wolf discreetly led the horses to a nearby spring while she clambered over rocks and through trees to find a suitably unseen spot. Afterwards, she made her way back to where he was waiting with the horses.

He stripped off his riding gloves, tucking them into his belt, then looked at her flushed face. ‘Thirsty?’ When she nodded, he held out a flask. ‘I filled it with cold water from the spring. Try some, it’s clean.’

Dubiously, she put the flask to her lips. At court, drinking river water could kill you, it was so often mired with filth from the palaces. But she was so thirsty . . .

She drank, then lowered the flask to stare at him. ‘It’s delicious.’

‘I told you it was good.’

He removed his plain velvet cap, dragging his sleeve across his damp forehead. His smile prickled at her nerves. Suddenly she realised how closely Wolf had been watching as she drank, his blue eyes narrowed on her mouth. They seemed more piercing than ever in the sunlight, and all the more dazzling for the blackness of his hair, short and dishevelled where he had combed it back with his fingers.

She licked her lips, and his smile became oddly intent. ‘Thank you,’ she managed huskily, holding out the flask.

He reached for it, his gaze still on her face, and their hands touched briefly. A spark of the most intense desire raced through her, setting her veins alight. For a few seconds her chest hurt and she could not breathe; her gaze locked on his. She tried to speak but could not form words. It was as though her mind had shut everything out but the roaring clamour of her senses.

Then he took the flask and turned on his heel, looking about himself. His voice was uneven. ‘I used to come here as a boy to get away from my lessons. Sometimes to escape the rod. There’s a cave down there in the hollow, near the spring. When the weather was fine I would bring a fleece or a cloak and sleep there, away from the hubbub of my father’s house. It is a good place to be alone.’

Still reeling from that fleeting contact, Eloise found she could make no reply. She gazed about the place instead, surprised and a little enchanted that Wolf would have brought her here, though they were still very much strangers. So this was a private place of his from childhood, a hideout where he could feel safe. She had her own little spots too, secret hiding places on her father’s estate, but she could not imagine ever sharing them with him.

‘Would you like to see inside the cave?’ he asked softly, and Eloise found herself nodding instinctively. Wolf took her by the arm and drew her down into the shadowy hollow, his breath warm on her cheek. ‘Mind your head as we go in . . .’

CHAPTER SIX

At first there was merely a glimmering rock face with shadows ahead, and she went willingly. But then they reached a second passageway, and their bodies blocked the light from the mouth of the cave. The air grew cold and Eloise shivered. It was much darker inside the second cave, as dark as the inside of a glove, and as they ducked their heads to enter the cavern, a strange rustling came from above.

It seemed to Eloise, who was not usually given to dreams and fancies, that something brushed her hair in passing.

A cobweb – or some kind of evil spirit?

She jerked back and clutched Wolf’s shoulder, unable to disguise the apprehension in her voice. ‘What . . . what was that?’

He laughed softly in her ear. ‘Bats.’

She shuddered, crouching even lower as they entered in case the tiny flying creatures were tempted to come back.

‘You used to sleep here? Alone?’

‘Alas, I was never able to persuade any of the local maidens to join me for the night,’ he replied, and she heard rather than saw the smile on his face. ‘Though if you had been a little older . . .’

‘No thank you!’

Wolf slipped an arm about her waist as she tried to turn round and escape. ‘A little further in,’ he murmured persuasively, ‘there’ll be daylight, I promise. A cleft through the rocks up above. Besides, if we keep going, your eyes will adjust to the light.’

Once again she caught his masculine scent and closed her eyes, glad he could not see her expression clearly. What did it matter to walk blind in this darkness?

He helped her negotiate the narrow passageway, his gloved hand on her arm. She had to go first, stumbling across the uneven ground, but felt him close behind. Her breathing began to sound ragged to her ears in the enclosed space, and she wondered he could not hear her heart, it beat so loud.

‘Look,’ he whispered, and she stopped, opening her eyes at last. ‘Over there.’

Wolf was right, she thought, feeling oddly off-balance now that her eyes were open again. There was daylight here, filtering down through the weight of rock and earth above them, illuminating the damp rock walls.

Turning her head slightly, Eloise followed the line of his pointing arm, and came face to face with a horse. Not the animal itself, but, even more remarkable, the painting of a horse on the rock walls. To find a painting in this dark space was so unexpected that she blinked and caught her breath, suddenly speechless, staring at what he had shown her.

A horse indeed, but not any horse she had seen. This was a horse from some other world, not her own. Thin curved lines described its back and legs in motion, its proud raised head, a single black dot for its eye.

‘What do you think?’ he asked at length.

‘It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Who drew it?’ She looked at him uncertainly. ‘You?’

Wolf gave an odd laugh. ‘Not I, no. It was here when I found this place as a boy, and long before that too. I used to lie on this damp rocky earth and stare up at that drawing for hours, wishing I could decipher its secrets.’

‘You did not show it to anyone else?’

‘This may sound strange, but I did not wish to tell anyone else what I had found, in case they came down here and destroyed the peace of the place.’ He studied the drawing himself, almost as though he had never seen it before. ‘Later, I asked one of my father’s oldest friends if he knew anything about such things. He was a man of great learning, a true scholar and a visionary. I knew he would not insist I told others about the place. He came to look at the horse, then told me it had been drawn on this wall in ancient times, before men lived in houses. He said a great northern tribe lived near York once, and perhaps visited this cave as a sacred place, for they worshipped the horse as a god.’

Afraid she might destroy the ancient art by touching it, she traced the horse with one delicate finger. ‘This is a sacred drawing?’

‘I believe so, yes.’

‘A pagan horse god.’ She looked about the walls, and her eye fell on another drawing. It was a small angular depiction of an animal with sharp ears and teeth, lunging forward as though leaping towards the sacred horse. ‘And what is that?’

‘No sacred animal this time, but my own poor effort at the art of the ancients.’ He smiled when she glanced at him in surprise. ‘I wanted to leave something of myself down here, if only in recognition of all those hours spent staring at another man’s creation.’

She studied his drawing more carefully, seeing how he had tried to copy the thin curved lines of the original, and the sense of motion. ‘It’s a wolf.’

‘What else?’

He had spoken lightly, but she was not fooled. ‘It’s very good,’ she said decidedly, then turned rather too quickly when he moved, as though afraid he was going to leave her down there in the chilly, echoing cavern.

Wolf had moved closer, not further away, she realised too late, finding herself maybe an inch or two away from the reassuring warmth of his body. They stared at each other in silence, two softly breathing people in that glimmering space meant only for animals and gods, until she caught a sudden darkness in his eyes. He brushed her cheek with his fingers, bare flesh to flesh.

‘Eloise,’ he whispered.

She had meant to draw back after his kiss, to refuse any further intimacy. They were not yet married, after all. Such things were forbidden between a man and a maid, even when betrothed, and she did not wish to shame her family.

But the moment his tongue stroked her lower lip, gently stealing inside her mouth, she was lost to reason. The weight of the earth above their heads, the running of the sacred horse and the wolf dancing after it, the rock walls gleaming with water and pressing in on them: all these made her lose her senses, no longer aware of time and space, of rules and decorum, of what was right and wrong. Only of his body against hers, and the desire burning in her veins.

She gripped his shoulders, clinging on. Her head fell back under his kiss, inviting his mouth on her throat and the tender skin above her breasts.

He cupped her breast, and she muttered, ‘Yes,’ kissing him back as though it were the most natural thing in the world for them to be in a cave, making love in the half-light.

There was a rightness about it when he lowered her to the earth, throwing down his jacket first to protect her from the dirt. She was his prey and he was the wolf, biting her throat so softly she found herself crying out in pleasure, not pain. His hands were so clever they taught her how to sigh and beg, and she stared up in wonder at the running horse on the wall when he dragged down her bodice and freed her breasts, kissing each one in turn. She felt like she was running too, wild and free across the grassy plains, her heart almost bursting out of her chest with the force of her own desire.