Knights of de Ware 02 - My Warrior (23 page)

“Answer it.”

She balked, but when Holden let one finger delve momentarily between the folds of her womanhood, she smothered a shriek and could not reply quickly enough. “I didn’t come to aid the rebels!” She almost wished she
had
betrayed him, and, God, she wished he wouldn’t touch her there.

“You came to protect me?”

“Yes, damn you!” Bloody hell, why wouldn’t he remove his hand?

Holden was silent for a long while, digesting what Cambria had said. If she was this adamant about Owen’s guilt and his threats, if she was so sure of it she’d left her precious Blackhaugh to follow her husband into battle, could there be some truth to her fears? He needed to find out what had transpired during her capture.

“Tell me everything about that night at the inn.”

“You didn’t listen before,” she said with a scowl. “Why would you listen now? Why should I waste my time?”

He curled his fingers down over her nest of curls again. Faith, she was a stubborn woman. “Because if you don’t, I’ll do wonderful, terrible things to you till you beg for my caresses. You don’t want that, do you?” Lord, what was he saying? This was the strangest interrogation he’d ever conducted.

Cambria didn’t doubt his threat. She’d already had a taste of his warfare. “All right, then. Let me go,” she sulked.

Holden tossed her skirt back over her knees and helped her up, still clutching to one of her wrists so she wouldn’t flee.

She told him what she knew, naturally omitting details that might incriminate her, or embarrass her, or make her seem the least bit less than perfectly innocent. And for once he listened. At least, she supposed he listened. In the dark, he might have been dozing off to her discourse, for all she knew.

When she finished, Holden spoke quietly, like the calm before a maelstrom. “Guy and Myles told a different story. They heard you threaten to kill Roger.”

She cleared her throat awkwardly. “Kill Roger?” she squeaked. “I suppose…that is, I
may
have said…”

Unprepared for the growl of anger from Lord Holden, she was even more unprepared for his next move. In one moment she was standing beside him, and in the next, he had picked her up off her feet and tossed her onto her back across the fur-covered pallet. His palms pressed her shoulders hard into the mattress.

“You little liar,” he said tightly. “I’ll have the truth from you, the entire truth, if I have to torment you half the night!”

Holden felt furious with her now, enraged with her deceiving tongue, hurt by her betrayal. He dropped his hands to the neckline of her threadbare kirtle and tore the frail garment asunder, baring her for his onslaught. He wouldn’t hurt her, of course—he never let his temper interfere with his control—but he’d wring the facts from her if it was the last thing he did.

Cambria could feel Holden’s rage as she thrashed beneath him. What was wrong with him? She’d told him the truth about the inn…well, most of it. What more did he want? She felt completely vulnerable now, lying there half-naked, her heart beating a rapid cadence against her ribs.

She swung at him with her fists. A few of her punches landed on firm flesh before his arms snaked around her wrists. Then he settled his formidable weight upon her hips, and she found herself pinned to the pallet. Damn him, he was straddling her like a palfrey.

What he did next astonished her. Slowly, deliberately, he raised one of her fists and pried it open with his strong fingers. He nipped the palm of her hand with his teeth, and then let his tongue trail across her skin until he was licking at the webbing between her fingers. She gasped at the current that rushed through her as he grazed the length of each of her fingers with his teeth.

“You threatened to kill him, didn’t you?” His voice was dangerously soft.

Holden’s body was fast becoming dangerously hard. He used all his power of concentration to ignore the lusty woman-flesh so warm against his loins as Cambria squirmed beneath him. He joined her wrists above her head with one of his hands, freeing the other to do as he pleased. Wary of her sharp teeth, he caught her jaw firmly and turned her head to the side.

Cambria stiffened as she felt his warm breath upon her cheek. Then, without warning, his tongue delved deep into the hollow of her ear. She nearly bucked off the bed.

“Did you threaten to kill Roger?” he whispered.

“Aye!” she hissed, angry at the way her body was responding, the way it actually craved his touch. God, she’d tell him anything if she could just have her control back.

“Good,” he said smugly. “Now you’re telling me the truth.”

She tried to shake her head free, but he impertinently licked her eyelids with the tip of his tongue as he turned her head to the other side.

“Myles and Guy told me they heard sounds from the room,” Holden breathed, making her cringe in anticipation, “sounds of heavy objects striking the wall.”

Cambria clenched her teeth together so tightly she thought they would crack. She wished she had a heavy object right now.

“Did you throw anything at Roger?”

His words tickled her neck, but in spite of bracing herself for what she knew was to come, her body still betrayed her, writhing in delicious agony when his mouth closed over her ear.

“Nay!” she sobbed.

“Nay? You didn’t throw anything?”

“Aye!” she said fiercely. “Aye, I threw anything I could find—a candlestick, a pot—“

“A dagger?” he asked carefully, releasing her jaw. “Hmm?”

He moved the fingers of his free hand along her collarbone, then lower, brushing the crest of one nipple with his palm. She winced at her body’s eager response. He lowered his head to the other breast and impudently licked across the nipple, blowing a cool breath upon it that stiffened it instantly. She moaned.

“Damn you, what do you want from me?”

He shut his eyes tightly. He knew what he wanted from her. Her uneven breathing and involuntary groans incited him almost beyond his control. Aye, he knew exactly what he wanted.

“I want the truth,” he said instead.

“I didn’t kill your knight.”

Holden’s voice grew deathly quiet. “Did Roger touch you?”

She hesitated, then chose to deliberately misunderstand him. “Of course he touched me,” she muttered. “I’ve told you he dragged me up to the room of the inn.”

“Cambria,” Holden growled in warning.

He slid his hand down her belly. She tried to roll over onto her stomach, but his thighs trapped her. He buried his fingers boldly in her curling thatch of hair and pressed firmly against her. Her hips answered him, pushing upward of their own accord.

“Did he touch you like this?”

“Damn you to hell!” she groaned.

“Did he touch you like this?”

Cambria wanted to hurt him. “Nay!” she shouted. “His touch was much more pleasing.”

He seemed unaffected by the lie. “Thank God I don’t please you so well, or I might find a dagger buried in
my
chest.”

Then he began moving his fingers, sliding across the moist folds of her skin. She thought she’d die of mortification, yet didn’t want him to stop. Surely he possessed some secret power, the ability to leave her helpless with the gentle touch of a single fingertip.

“Did you kill Roger because he…raped you?” he murmured.

“He didn’t rape me,” she breathed, surrendering at last, adrift on an erotic sea beneath his touch. “He tried, but he was too besotted for it.” She sighed, her voice gone soft and womanly. “And I swear on the grave of my father, I didn’t kill your knight.”

Holden closed his eyes and nodded slowly in the darkness, relieved. She was telling the truth. He could hear the resignation in her voice.

“Do you believe Owen killed his brother?”

“Aye,” she said thickly.

“And that he intends to kill me?”

“Aye.” She sucked in a breath as Holden’s thumb moved over her in lazy circles. Dear God, it felt as if her mind was not her own. She wanted him to cease, yet she wanted something more. “Please,” she sighed.

“Please?” Holden’s breath caught in his throat. He halted his movements. Surely his stubborn Cambria wasn’t ready to surrender…everything. “Please stop or please go on?”

Her long moment of indecision evoked a chuckle or irony from him that ended in a frustrated groan. “Oh, wife, there is nothing I’d like better than to take you here and now.”

A surge of desire swept through his loins as if to lend credence to his words. It took every bit of his willpower not to tear his trews away and drive that aching part of him deep into her soft, wet sheath.

“But I’m a man of my word. I must hear assent from your own lips.”

Please, God,
he silently begged,
deliver me from this torment.
But God paid no heed, and the silence dragged on as Cambria battled her own desires. It wasn’t to be, he decided, not tonight. He drew his hand from her and released her wrists.

“I regret I must leave you so unsatisfied,” he said tautly, “but it’s an oath you yourself have bound me to.”

He wondered if she ached half as much as he did. He swore he was throbbing from his waist to his knees. Never had a woman aroused him so completely nor left him so shaken. He let out a ragged breath, his body exhausted from long denial, and cursed the wretched honor that kept him from swiving his own wife.

Cambria buried her face in the crook of her arm. Never had she known such torment, such confusion. Her body was suffused with a nameless longing, every fiber of her being stretched taut as a bowstring. The Wolf had brought her to the border of an undiscovered country, and now he was abandoning her there. He’d humiliated her, conquered her, disgraced her. He’d beaten her soundly in this battle, as he’d promised he would.

But she’d be damned if she’d admit it. Better that she endure the fires of unrequited passion than surrender to her foe in a moment of weakness.

Clenching her teeth, she turned to her side and curled up into a ball. It would be a long, sleepless night.

Somehow Cambria managed to get some little rest, but it was far from peaceful. A moment past sunrise, she awoke with a gasp. The same terrible, dark dream of suffering and death had invaded her slumber. She felt like she was choking on the stench of the grave. Her heart pounded as if it longed to escape her breast.

Then the nightmare that had been so real fled like an insubstantial puff of smoke. For a moment, she couldn’t recall where she was. She shook her head, and then her memory came flooding back in an overwhelming rush as she gathered the rags of her torn kirtle about her.

She was alone in his bed, left there by her brute of a husband. He had tortured her—there was no other word for it. He’d used her own passions against her, seduced her mercilessly, and then deserted her, left her alone to face the scorn of everyone in the camp. She was surprised he hadn’t just claimed her virginity and been done with it. But then he’d said it himself. As much as she despised him at this moment, he was a man of his word. He wouldn’t bed her without her consent.

She pushed the hair back from her face and looked hopelessly at her ruined clothing. Damn the knave, he’d hardly left her a scrap to wear. Well, she decided, compressing her lips and pulling the coverlet from the bed, she’d show him a thing or two about Scots pride. She’d wrap furs about her as her ancestors had and walk out of the pavilion with her head held high.

Suddenly, the tent flap snapped open, and Holden was there at the entry, haloed by morning sunlight. She averted her eyes. The last thing she wanted to see was the Wolf gloating over his easy victory of the night before. She supposed she’d never hear the end of it. He’d won. He’d taken her will from her, fairly and without a struggle.

Eventually, curiosity got the best of her, and she scowled up at him. She was startled by his expression. No smugness molded his features, only something akin to regret. In fact, he looked rather like a wayward child come to ask forgiveness as he offered her a bundle of new clothing.

“I’d prefer to keep your identity secret,” he ventured, tossing the garments to the pallet when she didn’t reach for them, “for your safety.”

She only stared mutely, grateful that he made no mention of the previous night. At her silence, he cleared his throat and slipped into his more natural tone of command.

“You’ll stay well away from the fighting when it begins. I don’t know what weapons you’ve squirreled away for yourself, but they’ll remain where they are. Do you understand?”

She gave him a sidelong glance. How did he know her so well? “Afraid I’ll turn my weapons on you?”

“Nay,” he assured her, his eyes flickering with mild amusement as he turned to go. “Your own life would be forfeit were you to raise a hand against me. And I don’t think you’d be so foolish as to deprive your clan of their laird.”

After he’d left, she removed her torn kirtle and slipped the new gown over her head. It was blue woad, a peasant’s shade, and it clung annoyingly to her every curve, but at least it was whole. She donned her cloak, took a deep breath, and stepped out of the pavilion.

To her relief, everyone seemed much too busy to notice her. The servants were breaking camp, and the air vibrated with the sounds of rattling cookpots and swishing skirts, the clank of armor plate, the squeak of harness and cart, and snatches of conversation about the impending battle.

Gone was the levity of the previous day. In accordance with the king’s plan, war would begin on the morrow. The knights mounted up and rode in silence, the only herald of their passing the creak of rolling wagons and the constant drumming of horses’ hooves on the hard-packed earth. Deep into the land of the Scots they rode, and with each passing hour, the silence grew more complete, until by nightfall, the only noises in the camp were the soft snores of foot soldiers and the nervous snuffling of horses.

Holden, unable to sleep, polished his sword by the light of the stars. Tonight his blade gleamed. Tomorrow it would be stained with Scots blood. And God willing, he’d live to polish it again.

He’d met briefly with Edward. The king, after heartily toasting Holden for his strategic acquisition of a Scots bride, had divulged his strategy for acquiring Berwick.