Knight of Love (10 page)

His logic was twisted, his words wickedly immoral.
Bed slave! You will
not
think of it, Lenora!
But the images he conveyed stirred some demon in her nonetheless.

He increased the pressure on her mound, vibrated his fingers against her, pinched her nipple between his slickened fingers. Pleasure shot through her, from breast to loin, and ratcheted up higher.

She was breathing hard, caught on a sob, tension arcing high. She fought it, not wanting to give in to his will on this either. He'd bind her to him with it and then claim her body as his.

But he seemed to have all the time in the world, his body, hot and slick, everywhere around her, his fingers on and inside her. It was too much, far, far too much— no way to block it out. She tried to conjure images of Kurt, but Ravensworth's ridiculous whispered love words made it impossible to maintain.

“You're so beautiful, Lenora. Your skin is like silk. You are so soft, and so strong and so brave.
Liebling,
my precious bride.”

He seemed to know what touches gave her the most delight, how to play her body, get under her defenses, and slip past her resolve.

“No,” she said, shaking her head from side to side. “No, no.”

“Take my pleasure,” he urged.

No, no, no.
But even as she said the words, her will dissolved. Her body blossomed. Heat, fire, need, craving, and then release—a shimmering pulse.

He came inside her, at the end. One smooth push, his hot length sheathed deep within her, all the way. She supposed it hurt, couldn't really tell. Aftershocks rocked her. She felt the hardness of him pulsing inside as he groaned his own pleasure into her ear. He pushed deeper into her, held himself still through his release. To her shame, her traitor body arched and ground onto him behind her, the better to trigger more ripples of the climax rocking through her.

He kissed her shoulder, stroked the hair back from her face. “Lenora, my lady bride.”

How did the fool have the temerity to whisper terms of endearment with such affection in his voice? Did he fancy this a love match? Was he blind to the fact of the forced and sham ceremony on a battlefield to another man's runaway bride?

Bah—she didn't want to think about it anymore. She couldn't. When her breath finally returned to normal, she realized her cheeks were wet.

In the dim moonlight, his face darkened when he turned her over and realized it also. He gently wiped her tears.

And she saw the wet on his own cheeks.

But it was done. His will. Not her choice.

She stared at him a long time. Then she rolled over onto her side, pulling the linen and blankets to herself, leaving him in the cold. “You will get out of this bed,” she commanded. “And you will not touch me again.”

She listened as he rose, gathered other bedding for himself, and made a pallet on the floor. She kept her eyes firmly shut as he walked back to her and leaned down to kiss her brow. He tucked in her covers. “Sleep, lady. All will be well.” And she listened as his breathing settled and he fell into sleep.

Only then did she allow herself to cry, gulping back her sobs, stuffing the pillow edge into her mouth to muffle her grief. When the pillow and linen were soaked with her tears, exhaustion overtook her. A weight like the giant standing stones in the ancient fields of her family land descended upon her.

The blackness of stone and starless sky pulled her into the well of night, where she dreamed of giants with swords.

Chapter 7

T
he men broke camp the next day. Ravensworth and his officers laid plans to ride southwest into the Kingdom of Bavaria, another of the member states of the German Confederation. Lenora gathered that the earl judged his militia stood a better chance of evading capture there and of joining forces with others to aid the revolution. Apparently, Bavarian student protesters seeking an end to censorship had formed an alliance with working-class revolutionaries; together, they were pushing the Bavarian government to constitutional reform and the transfer of powers to the elected assembly. Rumors swirled that the state's unpopular King Ludwig might even abdicate. When word reached them that the Bavarian rebels had won control of the town center in Ingolbronn, the earl adjusted the course of their ride south. The Ingolbronn protesters lacked only reinforcements to compel the abdication of the local count. Ravensworth meant for his men to make the difference.

All that Lenora cared about was that Ingolbronn and Bavaria lay in the direction of Frankfurt—her initial destination and the location of the British ambassador. She would ride with Ravensworth for now, especially as he was treating her with high courtesy and keeping his word to leave her alone at night.

As they traveled through Bavaria in the days that followed, Lenora learned more about the revolutions sweeping Europe than she had in six months living with one of the worst of the old-school aristocrats whom the revolutions sought to supplant. Most of the demands of the people—greater voice in the government, more freedom of speech and of the press, tax and wage reforms to aid the poorest—had been peacefully granted in England decades earlier. She became vaguely ashamed of how little she knew of the movement. So caught up had she been in her personal nightmare with Kurt, she'd paid but scant attention to how he replicated his cruelty against her on a grander scale against those he governed. The demands didn't strike Lenora as excessive, but the hopes of the revolutionaries—and of Ravensworth himself—did strike her as unrealistic. For states as deeply entrenched in aristocratic privilege as those of the German Confederation, change seemed unlikely to happen overnight.

But if she had been blind, Ravensworth was surely naive. In the several evenings of conversation she had with the earl on the ride toward Ingolbronn, she came to see the man was a hopeless romantic, apparently in all things. He fancied himself in love with her—at first sight, he continued to insist every night as he tucked her into her bedroll and took up a chaste and protective post at her side. And he believed the revolution would liberate Germany and the rest of Europe from its feudal past and right centuries of injustice against the people.

“You think this history of privilege will change in one springtime, my lord?” she asked him one evening over a campfire dinner they shared of sausages and roasted potatoes. The earl's men set up their own fires and tents at a discreet distance, whether from courtesy or a desire to avoid her constant sour mood, she knew and cared not. “Does such a hope, and such expectation of rapid change, not strike you as unrealistic?”

“The cause is just,” he said stubbornly. “The people and the time are ripe for change. The divided territories can be united into a new and better Germany. I
feel
it,” he insisted.

“What you
feel
is your foolish hope. What any thinking person
knows
is that change does not happen overnight. The ruling forces are too powerful and entrenched across Europe to give up so much so quickly. England has always had a stronger tradition of limiting the power of the crown, ever since the Magna Carta. Europe is very different. Here, change will have to come about more slowly. Using violence to make your points only plays into the hands of the authorities and allows them to argue that your cause is one of anarchy and danger to all.”

He tossed another log on the fire, avoiding her gaze. “You have no faith, lady.” The man sounded near sulky.

“This isn't a game, Ravensworth! People are dying so you can play the knight chivalrous, riding to the rescue of the poor and the oppressed.”

It was a low blow. She almost regretted the words as his eyes narrowed. But her anger over the marriage and bedding had not waned.

“You forced yourself on me, against my will,” she continued. “Do you believe such force is acceptable? Is not what you did a similar abuse of power as that of the ruling classes here?”

His jaw flexed, and he poked hard at the fire with a long charred branch. “We've gone over this, Lenora. Of course it is wrong for a man to force a woman against her will.”

“But you did exactly that!”

“Yes, and I have said that it is wrong!”

“Yet, nevertheless, you did it!” she all but yelled at him across the flames.

He threw down his stick and rubbed his hands roughly across the stubble growing back on his skull. “Lenora, this isn't simply about you and me. The
w
rongness
of the situation goes far beyond the fact that I used my strength and advantage in the situation against you. The wrong is more complicated than that.” He heaved a sigh. “It is wrong that the nobles abuse the people, that those with power lord it over those without. That a prince can demand a village girl come to his bed. That young men from the university can be blocked from employment because their ideas are not in accord with those of the ruling prince. That a sovereign can force his religious beliefs on his subjects or toss them in jail on a whim. That a woman's property becomes that of her husband on marriage. That women—half the human race—be denied voice in government.”

She frowned, taken aback, as his words sank in. “Do you mean to suggest that women should be allowed to vote on electing representatives to parliament? Or that women should be allowed to become peers in their own right and deliver speeches in the House of Lords?”

“Both!” he said. “Did you know that the revolutionary government in Paris has just granted the privilege of the vote to all adult male citizens of France? It's an unprecedented move toward liberty, but why stop there? Why not female citizens as well? And what about
you
: the firstborn child of your parents. Why should you not inherit the dukedom, instead of your brother?”

She blinked at this question. “Because I am a woman?”

“Does that make you incapable?”

She had no answer for him. “You are quite the radical thinker, my noble earl.”

“If you imply that there is some irony or contradiction in my espousing rights for the people while holding a peerage in England, I see none. I support constitutional monarchy. But I also believe that the point of a noble title is to protect and empower the people.”

Radical, indeed. She thought of her brother, James, heir to the dukedom. It was true that she knew far more about politics and the management of the Sherbrooke estates than he did. He wasn't a bad young man or a particularly dissipated scoundrel, but he did spend most of his time carousing with friends. Her father was waiting until James reached his midtwenties before even trying to transfer the mantle of responsibility. She, on the other hand, had been reliably helping to run the estate since her coming-out over a decade before.

The earl rose to fetch more wood from a nearby pile. “Have you ever read Mary Wollstonecraft's
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
?” he asked, breaking into her thoughts as he sat back down and laid an armful of sticks to the side. “Or heard about the work of Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the United States of America? Mrs. Stanton is planning a convention for the rights of women to be held this summer in some place called Seneca Falls, in New York State. What do you think about the question of women's suffrage?”

“I've never really thought about it before.” Nor was she pleased to be forced to admit it to this man.

“Well, I think of such things, Lenora,” he continued. “When I studied at the University of Berlin, I read the great German philosopher Immanuel Kant, who argued that all humans are endowed with innate powers of reason and rationality—women
and
men. Universal suffrage follows logically from such a proposition. Why shouldn't women vote and be educated as are men? It is in a wise ruler's best interests to treat all subjects fairly and to allow the innate abilities of everyone to flourish, for the betterment of society as a whole.”

She fought a sense of admiration for his passion and sought refuge in sarcasm instead. “Are you a philosopher of the revolution as well as its warrior-knight, my lord?”

He shook his head. “My point is that the wrongs of this world are manifold. I want justice to be available to all, not only to those who are rich or highborn or well connected. I don't want war.” He leaned toward her and gathered her hands in his. His blue eyes burned in the flickering of the campfire. “And, by God, I don't want rape.”

She swallowed. But it was actions that mattered. And this man did not deserve her forgiveness. “Pretty words. And yet here you are, leading a revolution and taking a woman to bride by rape.”

“Yes, here I am.” He spat out the words. “You may condemn me, Lenora. And you may be right. God may condemn me as well. I know that Kurt hates me, as do many of the other nobles, for my role in attacking the system upon which their power is based. But I act by my conscience. I am not so arrogant as to believe my decisions are always right. But I am trying”—he picked up a thick stick and cracked it in half across his knee—“to do right in this godforsaken world of corruption and suffering and abuse.”

“It is not possible,” she whispered. What, exactly, was impossible, she wasn't sure: his claim of love for her, surely, as well as his vision of a free and equal society? “You wish to solve all the world's injustices?”

He shrugged one massive shoulder. “Those that I can, lady.”

With a muffled curse, he threw the stick in the fire and rose to stalk away.

She stared at his back as he disappeared into the dark night. Stared, and sought answers, and found none.

When the line of their riders approached the crossroads to Ingolbronn the next day, Ravensworth reined his horse in to fall back beside her. “Lady”—it seemed his favored address—“I am leaving Becker with you and heading with the others to scout out the situation in town. You'll stay at the crossroads until we return. It shouldn't be long.” The earl waved Becker over.

“Does Lord Becker stay as my prisoner guard?” she asked coolly.

Ravensworth sighed. “He stays at your side to ensure your safety. Such is my responsibility to guarantee.”

“Your responsibility as my
husband
?” she asked, smirking at him.

“Indeed, lady.” His eyes were dead serious. “I hold myself fully accountable to the duties of that honor, whether you acknowledge it or not.”

She drew breath to argue the point when his cousin rode up.

“Becker,” Ravensworth said as he raised a hand to cut off her further protests, “you will guard my lady with your life. Should the tide turn against us here, ride with her toward Frankfurt.”

Becker nodded patiently. “Wolf, we've gone over the plan several times. You agreed it was unlikely we'd encounter any problems. According to the reports we've picked up on the road, the revolutionaries have the town all but secured.”

“Nevertheless, overconfidence is the downfall to many a campaign, cousin.” With a final quick salute to her, the earl rode off down the Ingolbronn Road with the rest of his men.

Lenora watched the retreating backs of the riders until they disappeared around a curve a half mile down the road. Becker had dismounted and was munching on an apple. She joined him at the side of the road, where he helped her dismount and set her horse to graze with his.

“Care for an apple?” he asked her.

She shook her head. “Thank you, no. I do have a question for you, however. Does Lord Ravensworth's quest not strike you as quixotic, my lord?”

The corner of Becker's lip quirked up. “How so? Do you not believe in our cause for liberty and justice?”

She shrugged. “The cause is just enough. The people here deserve greater rights and freedoms, as our people enjoy in England. At the very least, Germany will never realize its economic potential unless the divided territories unite as one nation. The leaders such as Prince Kurt must certainly shed the medieval barbarism of ruling as if it were still the fifteenth century. But Lord Ravensworth does not merely fight for a cause. He gallivants about like Sir Percival himself on the quest for the Holy Grail!”

Becker bit back a laugh. “So you found Wolf's
Parzival
, did you? He's practically memorized that entire epic poem. And let's not forget that you are now his lady true, inspiring him on this quest. Did you like the song he composed in your honor two nights ago?”

“He compared my hair to the bramble bushes of the Black Forest!”