Keeper of the Dream (43 page)

She cried out, arching into him, her eyes squeezing shut, sucking him in deep, and he grunted, almost coming again, pulling back just in time. He surged upward until she accepted the full length of him, grinding against her, fitting so tightly into her, so deeply inside of her, and he was so lost, so lost, so lost, he wasn’t going to be able to stop, didn’t want to stop, ever stop, he heard his own keening breath, felt the tremors rack his muscles, thought this time, this time, this time, I will have her, all of her, she’ll be mine, mine, mine …

Every muscle in his body tightened violently and he exploded inside of her. Long and hard and deep.

She sagged against him, her body heavy. He relaxed his arms, and she slid to her feet, though she clung to his shoulders. She exhaled in a long, shuddering sigh and looked up at him.

Her eyes held a glazed, stunned look and her lips were red and wet and swollen. They quivered as she sighed again.

God, Raine, you stupid bastard, you were too rough.
He smoothed back damp wisps of her hair, cupped her jaw and rubbed his thumb across her mouth. “Did I hurt you?”

She pushed out her lower lip against his thumb. “I think my bottom’s scratched.”

“Let me see.”

Before she could protest, his hand spanned her scalp and he bent her over, pulling up her bliaut. There was a
faint red mark on one finely muscled cheek. He fell to his knees and pressed his lips to it.

She gasped, squirming away from him. “You, sir, are a perverted man.”

Raine knelt among the wet mulchy leaves and black earth of Wales and flashed his wife an unrepentant grin.

Laughter bubbled out of her. She tried to catch it with her hands but it spilled out, full and joyous, to be swallowed by the mist.

He stretched to his feet, reaching for her, to pull her into his arms, but she came willingly. She traced his features as if she were sightless and needed touch to know him. This time his lips met hers with a fragile tenderness.

But the kiss, that began with slow and easy sensuality, soon turned raw and hot with lust and he couldn’t bear it. He pulled away from her and walked off. He dragged in an aching breath, shocked at the effort it took to control himself. She was his wife, his pregnant wife, dammit, and she deserved better than to be taken up against a tree.

The wild white boar lay on its side in the sodden black earth. Steam rose from the hot blood where it pooled among the soggy, decaying leaves. The spear that stuck out the thick, hoary hide of its shoulder seemed much too slender and fragile to have killed it. A single eye stared sightlessly up at the canopy of leaves that dripped, wet from the mist.

“The white boar …” Arianna had come up beside him. “The tales were true, Raine. Only the bravest of knights could have killed such a beast.”

The gaze she turned on him was full of a strange, shining light. Since he’d never seen it before, it took him a moment to realize what it was. Arianna was proud of him. Never in all of Raine’s life had there ever been anyone to care enough about what he did to take pride in his accomplishments. If a dragon had come bursting out of the bracken just then he probably would have slain it, too, just to keep that shining look in Arianna’s eyes.

“He had me done for, Arianna, if it hadn’t been for you. It was a lady’s bravery that slew this particular beast.”

A self-conscious flush suffused her cheekbones, but she shook her head. “Nay, I was so scared my knees were clacking together worse than a pair of timbrels. And after the boar charged you, I just stood there screaming like a witless nit. You were the true hero.”

He reached out and pinched her chin between his thumb and forefinger, giving it a little shake. “You argue too much, wife.”

“Only when it is necessary to set you straight, husband.”

Arianna suggested they cut off the boar’s head and have it paraded through his fief. Raine told her not to be a witless nit. As a concession he agreed to send someone back to butcher the meat.

Arianna’s horse had taken flight during the boar’s attack, so Raine mounted her in front of him on his charger. Her mantle had been trampled and torn by the animal’s sharp little hooves and Raine’s leather jerkin was now stiff with its drying blood, so they rode through the chill mist without protection, and with his arms wrapped around her.

The saddle’s pommel was built high in front, forcing Arianna’s back up against Raine’s chest and her bottom in his lap. He scooted her forward, but as soon as he kicked the horse into a canter, she slid back onto him again. He kept pushing her forward and she kept sliding back. Her flesh seemed to mold itself into the cradle made by his spread thighs, and her breasts bounced and swayed against the forearm that he had braced across her chest.

“God’s love, woman,” he growled into her ear. “You are riding my rod instead of the horse.”

But she only laughed and squirmed harder.

As they emerged from the forest, nearing the castle, the sun began to melt the mist. Defused light bathed Rhuddlan’s
sandstone walls, turning them the ruby-pink color of newly ripened strawberries.

The castle gate gaped open. Strange sounds came from inside, cackling, rustling sounds, like a field full of crows. Raine sent his charger cantering across the drawbridge and pulled up short. He slid from the saddle and Arianna followed, not waiting for his help.

“God’s death,” she exclaimed softly, turning in a slow circle.

The bailey was full of men. Hundreds of men. Red and brown and yellow heads, bald heads, coifed heads, even one tonsured head. Men in dung-colored rags and men in gem-bright silks. Men with bulging muscles and necks thick as tree trunks and thin, flitty men with rice powder caked into seamed and pitted cheeks and rouged lips. Men with faces of all humors—some round and red as August berries, others weathered, hard, tough as cured hide. Boys barely old enough to know what to do with the rod between their legs and one withered, toothless man who looked too old to remember.

Raine searched among all these men for the obvious culprit. A flash of copper caught the corner of his eye.

“Taliesin!” he roared. “What in bleeding hell is going on here?”

The boy danced up, his face bright with excitement. “These are the Lady Arianna’s lovers, my lord.”

“God’s death!” Arianna said again.

“God and all his angels …” Raine echoed, looking around the bailey again, not sure he wanted to believe the evidence of his own eyes. The cursed squire had gathered every male in northern Wales from fourteen to sixty.

Raine heard a choked giggle, and he turned to his wife. She, too, was looking around the bailey and then her gaze settled on the squire. She put her hands on her hips and tried to glower at the boy, but her mouth kept twisting and puckering as she struggled not to laugh. “What in
God’s holy love did you think I was going to do with all these men?”

The boy’s chest puffed out like a rooster’s and he grinned, looking inordinately pleased with himself. “I thought to give you a wide variety to choose from, my lady.”

“Get rid of them,” Raine said.

Taliesin’s black eyes grew round as cartwheels.
“All
of them, my lord?”

“Not so hasty, husband.” Arianna pretended to give serious consideration to a handsome youth with long, curling black locks and soulful brown eyes. The boy gave her a shy smile in return. He was wearing, Raine saw, a short tunic and very tight chausses that showed off a pair of shapely, muscular legs.

“Get rid of them,” Raine said again. “Every bloody one of them.” He pointed at the smiling youth. “Him first.”

Laughing, Arianna slipped her arm through Raine’s, leaning into him. “Perhaps I really should keep one or two prospective candidates on hand, husband. Should you again become negligent in the marriage duty.”

Taliesin’s head bobbed eagerly. “Aye, ’tis a known fact that a well-loved wife makes a malleable wife, and with some women it takes more than one man—”

“Shut your mouth boy, else I’ll have the tailor sew it shut for you.” Raine grinned at his wife. “The Lady Arianna is merely trying to make me jealous with her foolish suggestion. A ploy that only a witless nit would fall for.”

Taliesin’s gaze flashed from Lord Raine to his lady and back again. Thick-lashed lids lowered quickly to cover a sudden flash of moonlight glimmering in jet eyes. He heaved a put-upon sigh. “You might have told me so before I went to all this trouble.”

The watchman’s horn shattered the din within the bailey, signaling the approach of riders. “Taliesin,” Raine
growled. “That sure as hell had better not be any more prospective lovers.”

Dazzling sunlight broke through the dissipating swirls of mist, flashing off the silver mail of a knight on a white destrier. A squire bearing shield and lance and a falcon followed.

“Why, it’s Earl Hugh,” Arianna said in a tone of voice that brought Raine’s head sharply around. She smiled, looking pleased to see his brother, and Raine felt a stab of sick jealousy that he told himself to ignore and knew he wouldn’t.

Earl Hugh rode up to them with a jingle of bells and a flash of silver. He dismounted, turning as he did so, his blond brows rising higher and higher as he took in the turmoil within the bailey.

By the time he had made a complete circle, amusement shone like sunlight on his handsome face. “Dare I ask what this is all about?”

Arianna stepped forward, hands folded at her waist, and curtsied prettily. She flashed Hugh an impish smile, which Hugh returned with a slow, lazy smile of his own and a look that started at Arianna’s muddy shoes, took in her torn and stained bliaut, the leaves and bits of bark in her hair, and the well-bedded, thoroughly-bedded, look about her that Raine knew his brother would not fail to miss.

The look he
hoped
his brother wouldn’t fail to miss, just as he hadn’t failed to miss the look of hunger that had flared in Hugh’s cornflower-blue eyes at his first sight of Arianna.

Hugh’s mocking gaze moved over to Raine, and he didn’t try to hide the desire he felt for his brother’s wife. The message Raine sent back through eyes flint-gray and hard was just as unmistakable:
She is mine, and if you so much as think of touching her, I will kill you.

“Are you giving something away here today?” Hugh
drawled. “Or is it always this crowded at Rhuddlan on Tuesdays?”

“I had it in my mind to take a lover,” Arianna said, unaware of the currents of rivalry and antagonism that flowed between the two brothers. “And now I’ve changed it. Poor Taliesin is not pleased.”

Hugh’s brows shot up even higher. “If you should change it back again, do let me know.”

Raine slipped his arm around his wife and drew her against him. “It was only a little jest that got out of hand.”

Hugh sighed, feigning disappointment. “I see…. Well, I bring you tidings”—he cast another amused look about the bailey—“which might be welcome tidings, given the overcrowded conditions of your poor little castle. King Henry has laid claim to the title of Toulouse. He’s assembling an army at Poitiers and he’s calling all his vassals to arms.” Hugh’s smile was dazzling. “You, big brother. He particularly asked for you. His best and bravest knight.”

Raine said the one thing he knew would wipe that smile off his brother’s face. “Henry picked a damn poor time to start another war. Arianna’s pregnant.”

Six years of marriage had yet to give his brother an heir, and Sybil was twenty-seven and getting older every day. Raine knew how Hugh would envy him his pretty wife with her young womb that was already bearing fruit.

Hugh only did keep his smile in place with a visible effort. He bowed slightly in Arianna’s direction. “My felicitations on your fertility, milady.”

Raine had felt Arianna stiffen as soon as he’d told Hugh of her pregnancy. Now she pulled out of his embrace. “Thank you, my lord earl. My husband is most pleased. It seems he is at last to get what he most wants in life. And I have done my duty, so he is pleased about that as well.”

Hugh turned his gaze onto Raine. “Will you be obeying the ban then? Or will you elect to pay the scutage?”

Scutage was money paid by a knight in lieu of military service. But all of Raine’s funds, even funds he didn’t have yet, were tied up in the building of his new castle. There was no way he could afford to buy free of his duty to answer Henry’s ban, the call to arms owed to his king.

“I’ll go and fight,” he said.

He glanced at Arianna, but she was looking at Hugh.

“Pity you are to lose your husband so soon after your wedding, Lady Arianna,” Hugh said. “Alas, I will not be here to console you.” He shrugged, flashing an insouciant smile. “Duty calls and Chester has been boring of late.”

“My lord Raine, too, must do his duty by his king,” Arianna said. She sent him a look he could not read. “At least this time it won’t be Welsh mothers who will be burying sons killed at the Black Dragon’s hands.”

The tangerine light of a summer’s dawn broke upon the bailey. A group of armored warriors milled within the shadow of the gatehouse, having breakfast. A varlet walked among them, carrying a pot of ale and a broad flat basket piled with bread loaves. He poured ale into leather blackjacks and passed around the loaves, and the men dunked the bread into the ale to soften it before stuffing it into their mouths. The smell of the bread and ale mingled with the aroma of horse and metal and leather … and excitement.

Arianna stood at the foot of the steps to the great hall, watching Taliesin, his golden helmet flashing in the sun, as he fastened a breastplate to the saddle of Raine’s charger. The big black horse pawed the ground and tried to take a bite out of the squire’s leather tunic. There was a gray-and-pink splotched bald spot on the animal’s rump where the hair had never grown back properly after his burns had healed.

Beside her, shifting his bulk from one big mailed foot to the other, stood Sir Odo, who would be staying behind with a troop of men to guard the castle. Together they
waited as Raine, armored in his black hauberk, strode toward them.

He had made love to her throughout the night with a desperation that frightened her, as if he feared he might never return. That desperation had been there, in a lesser degree, during all the times that they had made love during the past week. They made love, but they never spoke.