Untamed (24 page)

Dominic was watching her with eyes of silver fire.

“I should not do this,” he said hoarsely.

“What?” she whispered.

“This.”

He circled Meg's sleek sheath. The shivering cry he drew from her made his head spin with passion.

“So tightly held against me,” Dominic breathed, “yet you wear your desire like a perfume.”

“'Tis only—my bath.”

“'Tis your passion, Meg. There is no perfume like it.”

She would have said more, but he was between her legs again and she couldn't breathe for the rings of pleasure expanding through her body, crowding out all else but a delicious, pulsing heat.

“Dominic, I fear I cannot stand much longer.”

Without a word he lifted Meg and seated her on the trestle table. The cool, smooth wood was another kind of caress, one that served to focus the heat of her own body and that of the man who was standing in front of her, his face drawn with passion. Beneath his concealing mantle he worked at his clothing. Then he swirled his mantle over both of them.

“Wrap your legs around my waist,” Dominic said.

His voice was hoarse, urgent, and even while he spoke he was drawing Meg's legs around his body.

“Yes, like that,” he said. “Now come closer. Closer, Meg. Closer…yes, a bit more…”

Meg's breath came in swift and hard as she realized that it wasn't Dominic's hand caressing between her legs. Her fingers dug into his arms as she felt something broad and smooth and solid probe the edges of her softness.

“Dominic?”

He shuddered heavily as he nudged the sultry sheath, felt the liquid heat of her response, and knew that he must be held hotly, deeply, tightly.
Now
.

“Hold on to me, small falcon. Soon we will fly.”

“The devil take you, squire,” Eadith said loudly from the hallway. “If I want to speak to my mistress, I will!”

The drapery whipped aside as the handmaiden entered the bathing room. “Cook wants to know if—Oh!”

Though Dominic's mantle covered both himself and Meg, the circumstances left little doubt as to what Eadith had interrupted. The shock on her face would have been amusing to Dominic if he hadn't been ready to throttle her on the spot.

“Beg your pardon, Lord Dominic, lady,” Eadith muttered as she withdrew hastily.

Dominic sent a barrage of searing Turkish oaths after the handmaiden while Meg struggled to disentangle from her husband. At first he wouldn't permit it. Then, with a final oath, he released her.

“It's just as well,” Dominic said savagely. “I never meant it to go so far before you bled.”

A savage crack of thunder shook the keep. The last, rolling reverberations were drowned by the pouring rain.

Fortunately, the rain also drowned out Meg's words to her husband. Though each word was carefully chosen, not one of them was fit to pass a lady's lips.

T
HE COLD WIND AND RAIN WAS
followed by a cold drizzle, which was followed by another wild and blustery storm. It was two days before the sun came out again.

Meg was as unsettled as the weather. The body she had thought she knew quite well turned out to be something not very well known at all. The sound of Dominic's voice at a distance set her heart to racing. The sight of him striding into a room shortened her breath. The simplest touch of his hand sent pleasurable chills over her skin. Remembering how he had caressed her in the bathing room made a liquid heat coil deep within her body.

Meg's only satisfaction—and it was a paltry one—was that Dominic himself had not been unaffected. She suspected he did not trust his own formidable self-control any longer where she was concerned.

Have you bled yet?

No
.

Tell me when you do, small falcon. Then we shall fly together—and not before
.

Dominic's decree angered Meg. It was bad enough that he didn't trust her not to be breeding Duncan's bastard. It was unbearable to be wanted simply for
the fruit of her womb rather than for her laughter and her companionship, her warmth and her wit, her silences and her hopes. She had so much more to share with Dominic than a future heir.

Yet even as Meg dreamed of being able to seduce Dominic from his discipline, she feared the cost if she should quicken and not be able to convince Dominic that the babe was his.

He did not love her.

Nor did gossip encourage trust. The countryside was alive with whispers about Duncan and Lady Margaret, lovers destined for one another but separated by a harsh Norman master. No matter how emphatically Meg denied any liaison with Duncan to every person she met, no matter how she praised her Norman husband, the gossip persisted.

Meg prayed that Dominic hadn't heard the whisperings, yet she knew he must have. Little that happened in and around Blackthorne Keep escaped his attention. The servants could attest to his keen eye. The keep glistened with its recent cleaning. From every floor rose the fragrance of rushes and herbs freshly laid. The spices he had brought from the East scented the air around the kitchen, making the end of winter's stores smell like a feast.

But it was the contents of the treasure chests that fascinated most men. Each time Meg appeared with golden bells chiming and gems glittering in her hair, everyone within hearing stopped what they were doing and stared.

With mixed feelings of pleasure and frustration, Meg looked at Dominic's latest present to her. It was an extraordinary pin of gold and emeralds in a fanciful design that somehow evoked a falcon riding the wind. Larger than her hand, set with countless perfect emeralds, the pin secured a mantle of scarlet wool whose floral designs were emblazoned in
costly gold thread. Tiny golden bells had been sewn into the design. When she walked or turned or sat, delicate music followed each movement.

Small falcon with emerald eyes and jesses of gold. Wear this and think of me, of healing the land
.

Of sons
.

“Mistress?” Eadith called. “Where are you?”

Startled, Meg whirled around. Bells trembled and chimed, marking her sudden motion.

“In the chapel,” Meg said.

She stood as Eadith came into the small room which occupied the third floor of a corner tower.

“What is it?” Meg said.

“Your lord wonders if you would like to go hunting.”

“Aye! When?”

“After dinner.”

Meg looked at the angle of the sunlight slanting into the chapel. Almost noon. She had little time to change.

“Quickly, then,” Meg said.

In a flurry of golden music, Meg raced up the winding stairs to her quarters, followed by a grumbling Eadith. But complaining or not, the handmaiden's fingers were quick about their work. Before the noon bells rang, Meg was seated in the great hall, surrounded by knights whose falcons waited on perches along the wall behind the knights' chairs. The perch behind Dominic's chair was empty.

“Did my lord decide not to bring his peregrine to table?” Meg asked Simon, who was seated to the left of the empty chair Dominic would occupy.

“No. Something about the jesses had to be changed. He should be here soon.”

“Is she calm?” Meg persisted.

“Aye,” Simon said with clear satisfaction. “Fatima rides her master's wrist with great assurance. She is a queen among peregrines. By summer's end she will bring many fat ducks to our plates.”

A snarl came from beneath the table, followed by a flurry of yips.

“Baron!” Meg said clearly, not bothering to look. “Stop tormenting Leaper.”

A greyhound's head appeared next to Meg's thigh. Baron gave her a woeful glance. She rubbed his ears absently.

Simon stared. “If I called him down like that, he'd have my hand.”

“Baron? Nay, he's a gentle beast when he's not on the hunt.”

Laughter and a shake of his head was Simon's only answer.

A feeling of imminence came over Meg, telling her that her husband was near. She turned from Simon to the entrance to the great hall. An instant later Dominic appeared.

Despite the sunlit promise of the day, Dominic was wearing his heavy black mantle. On his wrist rode the large falcon. When he walked through a shaft of sunlight, the subtle gray and cream coloring of Fatima's feathers shone like steel and pearl.

The peregrine knew her own aristocracy. Certainty of prowess was in every line of her body. Her clear, penetrating black glance summarized and dismissed the cheerful chaos of dinner in the great hall. With the indrawn stillness of a supremely patient predator, the falcon awaited the signal for a hunt to begin.

Murmurs of admiration and excitement rose from the rank of knights as Dominic strode past with the peregrine riding calmly on his wrist. Many of the other birds, some of them with long training, went
hooded to their perches in the great hall. Not Dominic's falcon. Her eyes were calm with elemental knowledge of life and death.

And from her legs dangled new jesses studded with emeralds and precious golden bells.

“By God, she is a beauty,” Simon said.

Dominic smiled and held his wrist next to Fatima's perch behind his chair. She stepped onto the perch without a fuss. Then she cocked her head from side to side and looked at the banquet hall as though trying to decide if there were anything worthy of her predatory attention.

“I pity any mouse brave enough to venture into the hall,” Simon said.

“Nay. Fatima won't be bothered by such tiny prey,” Dominic said.

“Try not feeding her for a day or two,” Meg retorted. “She'll catch mice fast enough to put Black Tom to shame.”

Dominic gave his wife a sideways look. He had been careful not to be alone with her since he had so nearly taken her in the bath. Staying away from her hadn't been easy; just remembering the act of opening her thighs and beginning to press into her as she sat on the table had the ability to make him hard, hot, ready.

With an inner curse, he stifled his lusty thoughts. Before he touched her again, he must be certain she wasn't breeding. He could not trust himself to hold back a second time.

“You look beautiful, as always,” Dominic said.

He lifted Meg's hand and brushed a kiss against the underside of her wrist. The sudden, frantic race of her pulse beneath his lips made him want to groan with a mixture of triumph and sexual hunger.

Will she never bleed?

“'Tis the jewelry and mantle,” Meg said. “They are beautiful, not I.”

“'Tis you,” Dominic said flatly.

Though Meg said nothing more, Dominic read her disbelief in her expression. His mantle flared almost impatiently as he sat down next to Meg.

“Duncan must have been a miserable lover,” Dominic muttered under his breath as he sat between Simon and his wife.

Meg couldn't believe what she had just heard.

“I beg your pardon?” she whispered.

“Duncan must have been a miserable lover,” Dominic repeated obligingly.

Simon made a choked sound and carefully looked away from his brother.

“What are you saying?” Meg asked, shocked.

“He never got around to mentioning your beauty,” Dominic said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Therefore the bastard must have been a miserable lover.”

“'Tis hardly surprising the matter never came up,” she retorted. “I am not beautiful and he was never my lover!”

Dominic's eyes gleamed as he remembered Meg's body gilded with water and passion, each of her breaths echoed by softly crying bells. The familiar rush of blood pooling into rigid flesh made him want to laugh and curse at the same time. By the time Meg bled, he was going to be walking around doubled over from the pain of constant arousal.

“You are wrong,” Dominic said in a low voice. “I have never seen another woman as beautiful to me as you.”

The sensual blaze of his eyes and the rasp of desire in his voice told Meg that he, too, remembered the intimacy of the bath.

“Duncan has never seen beauty in me,” Meg said huskily. “Not as you have.”

For a vivid instant Dominic remembered just how much of her beauty he had seen. With a wrench he pushed the image of her open thighs from his mind.

Deliberately he turned away from Meg and signaled for the meal to be served. When he turned back to her, his mind—if not his unruly body—was under control once more.

“That's not what everyone says,” Dominic said coolly. “Each day that goes by, more gossip breeds about your lover waiting for you where the forest gives way to the northern fens.”

“I can't control wagging tongues,” Meg said in a tight voice.

With a shrug, Dominic reached for his mug of ale. “So long as gossip is all that's breeding, it matters little.”

“Is it so hard for you to believe in my honor?” Meg demanded.

Dominic's hand paused in the act of lifting the mug.

“Honor is many things to many people,” he said after a moment. “In Jerusalem, God's honor demanded that Turks die. For the Turks, God's honor insisted that infidels die. In England, honor demands fealty to king. In the northern marches, honor requires that the king of England be denied. I do not know what Glendruid honor requires beyond that you do not use your healing skills to kill.”

“It requires healing,” Meg said succinctly. “Betraying your trust in my fidelity is hardly a healing thing.”

“For me, no. But for Duncan? Ah, that is a different matter. Nay,” Dominic said abruptly when Meg would have spoken. “Don't ply me with soothing words, wife. 'Tis not words that matter, but deeds.”

“Truly? Then why does gossip trouble you?” she asked. “It is but words.”

“Describing deeds—”

“Which never occurred,” she shot back.

“I hope you are right. But hope, too, is merely a word.”

The fish course arrived, interrupting the conversation. In silence Dominic applied himself to the boiled eel and its savory broth. The same silence prevailed through the fowl course. The pigeons were lean but decently spiced and quite brown from the spit. Dominic ate two of the birds with the same precision and restraint he did everything else.

Rather grimly Meg wondered if Dominic ever slipped the leash on his self-discipline, or if he was truly as cold as he seemed. No sooner had the thought come than she remembered his expression when he had stood between her thighs in the bath. His face had been drawn with the same passion that had made a shudder run visibly through him when his blunt, aroused flesh had first probed against her sultry gate.

Heat flushed Meg at the memory. She reached for her ale and drank quickly, hoping to cool the uncanny fires Dominic had lighted within her.

Beside her, Dominic lowered his own mug to the table with a thump and turned to his brother.

“What news, Simon?”

“The same. The Reevers are prowling through your estates like the wolves they are. When we come upon them, they vanish. When we turn our backs, they reappear.”

Though Simon spoke softly, Meg heard him above the genial clamor of the meal. Her breath tightened in her throat until she ached.

She still dreamed, and she still awoke chilled and sweating at the same instant.

“God's teeth,” Dominic muttered. “Duncan will get naught for his trouble but hunted down like a wolf and slain. He seemed a wiser man than that.”

“He is a bastard,” Simon said matter-of-factly. “He will do what he must to get land. Obviously he has spies here. He knows your knights haven't yet arrived. That's why he is so bold.”

“Aye,” Dominic said grimly. “What news did Sven have from the south?”

“Ten days or more before the rest of your knights and your riding household arrives. The storms have been severe.”

“God's
teeth
. Had I known, I would have waited to marry.”

Simon smiled thinly. “I doubt that, brother. It was rumors of Duncan that spurred you north in the first place.”

A platter of whole roasted pig appeared in front of Dominic before he could answer. The boar was winter-lean and old, but the kitchen had done its best. The ears were nicely burnt yet still intact, and the skin was a deep brown, promising as succulent a roast as the animal's age and condition permitted.

“I hope the hunt is successful,” Dominic said. “If the cooks can do this well with a doddering old boar, imagine what could be done with venison.”

“Stop. You will make me drool,” Simon said.

The greyhounds set up a snarling, yipping turmoil beneath the table.

“Baron,” Dominic said curtly. “Enough!”

After a few yips and a soft growl, the hounds subsided.

Dominic pulled his belt knife and sliced portions of meat for himself and for Meg. Steam rose and savory juices ran onto the platter, pooling like hot rain. A stuffing of figs, onions, and rosemary spilled
out. Hot bread was passed along with the meat.