His Lady Bride (Brothers in Arms) (25 page)

Gwenyth’s nose turned red and her eyes glossy with tears.

“Do not dare pretend you know naught of what I say!”

She swiped her palm across her cheek, then balled it into a fist at her side. “If ’twas Rowena you sought, why did you touch me? If you merely wanted a woman, why me? How could you make me believe you—”

Tears ended her sentence. Aric gathered her against him. As his wet skin dampened her chemise, he felt the warmth of her flesh flow to him. She smelled like a spring garden, earthy and alive, and he ached to possess her as much as he yearned to soothe her.

“I have not touched Rowena in two years, since before she wed my father. And I do not want to touch her now.”

Suspicion clouded her blue eyes, now the shade of midnight. “But I found you together in the treasury with your head bent to her and her arm—”

“We spoke of the accounts, of missing grain and stray chickens.”

“But your face… It looked so tense.” Confusion colored her voice into a shadow of its usually robust pitch.

He sighed and took her face between his palms. “Aye, because she had accused you of thieving. And she angered me. I cannot deny she has sought my bed since we came to Northwell, but I have refused her.”

Gwenyth’s brow furrowed. Tears welled in her eyes, then spilled to her cheeks in fat drops that slid warmly beneath his fingers. Her pain made him ache. He felt despicable for inciting such sorrow, even if unintended.

“I…” She shook her head and bit her lip, trying to hold more tears at bay. “Then why do you allow her to stay? If not to be your leman, then why?”

Aric smoothed a soothing hand over Gwenyth’s glossy tresses, marveling at the black silk that slid through his fingers. “Rowena has nowhere else to call home. She is a distant cousin to Edward IV’s queen Elizabeth Woodvylle. When the queen’s oldest son, the boy who should have been king, disappeared, Elizabeth feared the worst.”

She had been all too right,
Aric thought mournfully. And he had played a hand in ensuring the death of her other son, young Richard. He closed his eyes in recrimination and let icy guilt slide through him.

“I do not understand how the dowager queen’s troubles affect Rowena.”

He nodded, returning to the present, to the feel of his distraught wife. “Rowena’s family was poor but well connected. To improve their position, her parents tried to aid the queen in an ill-fated plot to overthrow King Richard. Elizabeth remained safely in Westminster, where Richard knew he could not touch her without appearing a perfect villain. And he is already an unpopular king.”

“Aye,” she said, but her frown clearly showed confusion.

“So King Richard stripped Rowena’s family of their lands and executed her father for treason. We were betrothed by then, and I was responsible for her. I brought her to Northwell.”

“Then she wed your father?”

“For a time, aye. But my father was a practical man, above all else. He knew I hesitated in speaking vows with Rowena, who was growing impatient to be wed. My father, who had been without a wife for nigh on five years, liked the order of the household, the warm meals, the castle so well tended. And I’m sure he wanted a beauteous woman warming his bed. So he wed her.”

“Why did you hesitate in wedding Rowena?”

Her breathless query and hopeful eyes tugged at something in his chest.

He shrugged in answer. “She does not…intrigue me. She is without passion. I never had to guess what Rowena would do next.”

“Even when she married your father?”

“Especially then. When she moved out of my chamber, I knew it would not be long before she moved into his. She knew I regretted asking her to wife.”

Gwenyth frowned. “Then why did you ask her?”

His laugh was without mirth. “For much the same reason my father did. The great hall at one time could easily have passed for our pigs’ pen. A houseful of warring men can hardly be bothered with cleanliness. At the time, Stephen was merely ten and six.” Aric laughed again at the irony of his thoughts. “I thought he needed something of a mother.”

Grimacing, Gwenyth stepped away. “So why is she your chatelaine now?’

Aric crossed his arms over his chest, barely conscious of the cool air on his naked skin. Gwenyth’s tears had been real, and his belief she had manipulated him with her body had kept him from treating her with the honor due any wife. Regret hammered him.

“Because I was a fool, Gwenyth. In the morning, I will see you receive the keys and instruct the servants that they will take direction from you.”

Elation brightened Gwenyth’s eyes. “Truly?”

The unease once knotted in his stomach unraveled when he saw the pure joy on Gwenyth’s face. Aric took her hand in his and brought it to his mouth for a kiss.

Gwenyth smiled at him through her tears. “For eight years, I have waited to be a lady again.” She sniffled, then continued, “Uncle Bardrick and Aunt Welsa treated me like a servant, though I had been born a baron’s daughter. And they always said they treated me as well as I deserved. I began to fear they were right.”

Her tears fell in earnest. Their power, coupled with that of her words, hit Aric in the chest with the force of a battering ram. She would believe such drivel? Why had he failed to understand her needs sooner?

“Nay. Never—”

“If you hear a thing often enough, ’tis all too easy to believe,” she explained with a grimace. “But then we wed. Aye, I was angry, at first. But soon I did not feel such deep loss for my family anymore. And now you have accepted me as your wife and chatelaine.” She drew in a shaky breath. “I am truly, truly happy! ’Twas nothing but foolishness to doubt that marrying you was best for me.”

And he had doubted her motives, all but accused her of greed. Fighting off an urge to chasten himself, Aric wiped the tears from her heated cheeks. He felt a warmth within that had little to do with the temperature, a sentiment he could not explain. Fondness, affection even. Desire, certainly. He drew her into his embrace.

“So you like me better than Sir Penley?”

Gwenyth laughed, a trickle of a sound like a shallow brook on soft earth. “He is comely enough, but if he does not know how to use his sword as you do, what good is he?”

At her sly grin, he laughed. Then she stepped fully against his naked length, still damp from his aborted bath. Smiling, she looped her arms around his neck and drew his mouth down to hers.

Aric accepted her kiss with greed, possessing her mouth completely in one sweep. He had never wanted a woman this way, with more than his body. Something tender within urged him to be near her—always. Since he rarely ignored instinct, Aric pulled her even closer.

“I could demonstrate again my prowess with a sword,” he offered between heavy breaths.

Her own breathing was no less labored. “Aye. I may have forgotten.”

“Never do that,” he growled, then captured her mouth again, sinking into the flavor of her, the feel of her, so more vibrant than any woman in his memory.

In response, she moaned, her lips pliant against his, her tongue driving him quickly insane with a sensuous slide. That chemise had to come off. Now.

With a yank, Aric tried to pull the garment down her body. It resisted, hanging on one milky slope of her shoulder. With a good jerk and a tear, her arm was free, and the silk slid quickly down her body to the wooden floor. Against him, she shivered and kissed him with greater urgency.

Needing to touch her, Aric slid his fingers down her spine, grazed the curve of her buttocks, then drew her against him with force. She wrapped her legs around him in response.

“Touch me,” she demanded against his damp mouth.

Aric never thought of refusing. He peeked across the room.

The bed was too far away.

Beside the trestle table, he remembered a chair. That would do—for now.

Inching back until he felt the seat against his knees, he eased into the chair. Gwenyth gasped as his staff made intimate contact with her.

She sent him an uncertain glance. “I know not—”

“Shhh.” He brushed a dark lock of hair from her ivory cheek “I know. Your body knows. ’Twill be good.”

Gwenyth nodded, her eyes expectant. Aric vowed not to disappoint her.

Supporting the small of her back with his hands, he urged her to arch. She did, beautifully. He eyed the pale curve of her throat, her delicate shoulders—and her breasts, so tempting beneath his mouth. Had this been any wench, he would have used the moment to suckle her breasts while ignoring the rest. But for some reason he could not place, Aric wanted more. He wanted all.

He kissed her neck, his teeth grazing her sensitive earlobe. She moaned an encouragement and gripped his arms with tense fingers. As he breathed his way down her shoulders, placing tiny kisses on her arms, he thumbed her nipples, so pink and taut. But when she edged closer, seeming to place her breast within a breath of his lips, he succumbed.

She tasted light and sweet and of woman. She tasted as he remembered, yet something was different. That he could not deny. It made her all the sweeter as he swirled his tongue around her stiff bud, feeling it taut between his lips. She wriggled on his lap in invitation.

The feel of her against him, slick and open, nearly undid him. Not wanting to waste another second, he lifted her hips until he felt himself poised at her entrance. He captured her lips with his own at the moment he surged inside her. She sighed into his mouth.

With a steady, sure pace, Aric filled her again and again. Sweat dampened his forehead, and he closed his eyes in bliss at this blessed union.

By the saints, how he had missed her. She felt like a hearth to him, warm, snug, familiar, welcome. Aric wanted nothing more than to burn within her, then rise from the ashes into the comfort of her warmth.

Then she gasped and clung to his neck. Gwenyth cried out, her body throbbing around him. Aric drowned in her honeyed satisfaction, then quickly found his own in a bright burst of light and hope and wonder.

Minutes passed before either moved more than the bit required to breathe. Gwenyth’s soft length curled around him, her cheek resting on the top of his head. Aric nestled her closer, spreading absent kisses on her velvet shoulders.

Suddenly, he felt her shoulders shake and heard a stifled sob. Alarm drilled through him.

“What ails you, wife?”

No answer.

He set her back until he could see into her flushed, damp face. “Gwenyth, did I hurt you?”

She shook her head and drew in a deep breath. “You have made me happy, more than I would have believed. In every way. Not even Nellwyn could be happier.”

She sank her fingers into his hair, brushing it away from his face. And she stared into his eyes, truly looked at him in a way he doubted any woman ever had.

“I am glad.” His voice broke as he tried to decipher that look in her eyes.

“I love you,” she whispered.

Aric stopped breathing.

Three words. Gwenyth needed no more than three words to stagger him completely.

In that moment, joy soared in his gut. His hands tightened on her waist, as if ensuring she would stay every day and prove those three words.

But what did she expect in return?

Worse, what if she learned what had driven him to the forest where they had met?

His joy became fear. How could he make her happy in the days to come?

“Gwenyth—”

“Say nothing now,” she broke in, her face clouded with something he disliked. Regret? Uncertainty? “What I feel for you can be nothing else, and I merely wanted…you to know.”

She tried to leave his lap. He held her tightly against him, keeping himself intimately entwined.

“You are like no other,” he said, staring up into those hopeful blue eyes. Something tightened in his belly. “I am glad to have you as my wife. But…” He shook his head, looking for the words he needed. “Love comes when you know each other completely.”

“I know your heart!”

Aric wished it were that simple, wished he had not spent most of his life warring and killing. Wished there were not a dead ten-year-old prince whom he’d helped to see slaughtered.

“Nay.”

She had not seen the greed and ambition that had beat in his chest for nearly fourteen years since his uncle Warwick’s death and the crown’s seizure of Warwick Castle, a Neville holding for generations. She knew not how badly he wanted the family honor restored, that for a time he would have done—and had done—
anything
to have it all back.

“You are a good, kind man,” she protested.

He tried not to laugh at the bitter irony. “If I told you of my past, you would shrink from me in horror, Gwenyth.”

“Aric, all men make war on the battlefield—”

“The battle cannot be helped. ’Tis a matter of survival. The rest…I have no excuse.”

“I am certain you speak false. Tell me what happened.”

Shaking his head, Aric refused. Aye, he wanted to unburden his soul. But at what cost? The information he held could be twisted into treason in the blink of an eye if the wrong ears heard it fall from Gwenyth’s mouth. He must protect her from the knowledge, from himself.

“I can tell no one. Not Drake or Kieran. Not the Earl of Rothgate. Not my brother. Not you.”

He lifted her from his lap and set her aside. After rising to his feet, he dressed quickly in a simple gray tunic and black hose. He tried not to notice Gwenyth’s stunned, hurt face.

“We will never speak of this again,” he vowed.

And before Gwenyth could lure him into breaking his word, he left the room.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Aric endured a frosty confrontation with Rowena the next morning. The woman bristled, pleaded, cajoled, and screamed, the likes of which he had never heard from his once-betrothed. But it was done; Gwenyth would now be chatelaine. Aric did not relish the fury Rowena had unleashed upon him, but ’twas worth the tongue-lashing, for he had done well by his wife.

He had entered the great hall to break his fast and imbibe a large cup of ale when a pair of guests arrived. One was a page of Margaret Beaufort’s, bearing a letter from his mistress which more than likely contained cryptic plans regarding Henry Tudor’s invasion.