To Burn (37 page)

"Then you admit that I am in command of this place and of you?"

"That is not what I meant—"

"How not, when you always speak exactly what is in your heart? It is one of your most engaging qualities." He grinned.

Melania lost some of her fire. "It is?"

"Yes," he said, running his hands down her arms to hold her by the hands. "Now admit it, Melania; you will stay by my side and be all that a man could hope for in a wife because you love me—"

"Just because I prayed for your hand—" she flared.

"As I love you."

The tumult of the triclinium had not quieted. They hardly noticed. It was a quiet moment for them, a moment when a new bond was being forged, a new contract. A new vow.

A new truth was born in that moment of time.

"You love me?" she asked, her voice small and sticking in her throat. She had never, ever, had anyone say those words to her.

"I love you," he repeated, his smile fading into solemnity.

She looked at the floor in happy disbelief, distantly noting that three more tiles had been worked loose. Her Roman villa was crumbling.

"And you love me," he said again. "You cannot say the words in Latin, it seems. Shall I teach them to you in Saxon?"

"You are very arrogant," she mumbled.

"Perhaps, but also very sure."

"How can you be sure? I have not been sure, at least, not until recently," she stumbled.

"Melania" —Wulfred smiled, pulling her into his arms— "you blaze every thought from your eyes. I have seen your love when you stood with me in silent support against Hensa. I have felt your love because you yearn for my company as for no other. I have heard your love for me each time you name me 'oaf.' But it was when you, my little Roman snake, let your brother go, choosing instead to stay with me that I knew—I
knew
—that you loved me."

Melania wiped her eyes against Wulfred's bare chest, embarrassed beyond measure that he had reduced her to this. He was a very arrogant, very wise Saxon.

Melania looked up at her husband, glowing in his golden strength, He was a formidable man. It was one of his most engaging qualities.

"You will be wife to my heart and mother to my children, and you will never again know the slash of invader's steel. You are mine, Melania," he said.

She was his, hopelessly his.

"So be it," she vowed in answer, willingly losing herself in his eyes.

"These are words of love, Roman? I can see that I will need to teach you Saxon endearments; the Roman tongue does not have the words to tell the depth of your love for me, it seems," Wulfred grumbled with a half smile.

Balduff chose that moment to sweep her into a hug, spinning her around in his joy before releasing her to drink a long toast with Cenred.

"And you will not incite men's lust with your Roman wiles," Wulfred said, scowling after Balduff as he led her from the triclinium. "You will be a pure wife, with no hint of adultery."

The night air was wet and the sky thick with clouds; the moon hid behind a tattered edge that raced across the sky. It would rain again. Autumn had come.

"Why, Saxon? Because you pronounce that it will be so? When have I ever obeyed you?"

Wulfred swept her through the portico and out into the courtyard; he obviously had no desire to see the walls of his bedchamber anytime soon.

"You will in this."

He hurried her up the slope, ignoring the howl of a wolf as he made his way up to the rock that sliced the hillside. The clouds built and thickened as the wind abated. The rock was warm; the air was cool.

"Your punishments are nothing; they are rewards. Have I not been kept from all toil, given the best food and the best place at table? Have I not been made a wife instead of a slave? If these are Saxon deterrents, give me more."

Wulfred turned her face up to his with his thumbs, tracing the firm line of her jaw. The moon behind him lit the outline of his hair to white, etching lines of strength on the contours of his muscles. He emanated power in a world gone wild. He had given her love without qualification and without censure; never had she known such love. Never had she known such freedom. She would love Wulfred of the Saxons forever.

"There is no Roman divorce in the Saxon world," he warned softly, his lips brushing her temple before tracing a path to her ear. "The Saxon judgment against adultery is death, Melania."

Leaning into his caress, wrapping her hands in the golden length of his hair, Melania smiled wickedly.

"Yours? Or mine?"

The End

Author’s Note

The story of Wulfred and Melania takes place at a very turbulent time in world history, during the gradual decay of the Roman Empire. I tried to capture Melania’s grief, confusion, and denial that the world as she knew it was coming to an end. Wulfred, an invading Saxon, was England’s future.

The official religion of the Roman Empire in this period was Christianity and Britain, being part of that empire, was largely Christian. The Saxons, Angles, and Jutes who invaded England in the Dark Ages were quick to accept Christianity.

Nicolaa, the heroine of Book 3 in the Medieval Knights series, The Willing Wife, is the descendant of Wulfred and Melania. The ruined remains of Melania’s villa are referred to briefly in The Willing Wife. Nicolaa, like all good descendants should, reflects the best combination of character traits of both Wulfred and Melania. Read it and see if you think she is more like Wulfred or Melania.

The final descendants of Wulfred and Melania, and of Nicolaa and Rowland (the hero in The Willing Wife), appear in A Kiss To Die For, a story set in Abilene, Kansas in the post Civil War period of the American West. Jack Skull, the hero of that story, is their descendant. Jack’s true name is Jacque Scullard.

As to how Jack wound up in America…Rowland is from France. Upon marrying Nicolaa, he had land in both France and England. The branch of the family tree that Jack springs from settled in France during the time of Cromwell in England. In the 1790s, his direct ancestor emigrated from France to New Orleans. In the 1850s, Jack’s father moved with his wife to Texas, where Jack was born as Jacque Scullard. As a bounty hunter, he goes by the name Jack Skull. In Jack, I can see the echoes of Wulfred, Melania, Rowland, and Nicolaa. The descendant of a Saxon warrior and a medieval knight, wearing a cowboy hat.

Excerpt from

The Willing Wife

Book Three

Medieval Knight Series

by

Claudia Dain

© 2002, 2011 by Claudia Welch

Chapter 1

England, 1155

Lammas

"I want neither lands nor wife," Rowland grumbled.

"A sorry state, since you now have both," William said.

"Talk to the king, William; you have his ear," Rowland said.

"I may have his ear, but I want to keep my head. I will not argue his choice of gifts."

"This is no gift," Rowland said, looking off into the distance.

"It could be," William said softly, his eyes on his friend's dark profile.

It was just before Lammas, the beginning of the autumn season, and the woods were still cloaked in green. That would change soon enough. Even now, the wind had lost its summer softness; the season had turned. As Rowland's life had turned.

William looked around him at the lands Henry had gifted him at the beginning of the year. Greneforde was his home and his destiny, the prize he had striven for in battle upon battle. With the land had come a wife, as was so often the way of things in this world. As Rowland now knew for himself. The difference between them was that William had been hungry for his gift of land and legacy; Rowland was hungry only for battle. It was a rare irony that his battle skills had earned him his present misery.

Rowland spoke true: he wanted no wife. Yet he had one, and there was no escaping a gift when King Henry II was the giver. Nay, Rowland must claim the woman as wife.