Claudia Dain (24 page)

"By your father's word, and upon this wager, I will have."

"What have you set between you?" she snapped, her brows lowered in anger. Hot anger. Aye, he liked this angry heat better than chill disdain. He would take it, even fan it, to keep the frost at bay. "I am no pawn in a man's game."

"Lady," he breathed in a rough gasp, "you are what God has made you, and, by God, you shall be whate'er your father needs you to be."

"I am my father's to command. Not yours."

"And by your father's will, that may change within the hour."

She laughed then, a small, cold laugh that burned into his heart and all his plans.

"It will not. And if it shall," she said with a hard grin, staring up into his face with the ferocity of a falcon, "then I shall only need to call upon the very birds of the air and beasts of the wood to take me out of your grasp. I will not be taken by any man. Not even you, Ulrich. Not even for the price of a moan."

He towered over her, like a tower over the battle plain, yet she did not fear his anger or his will or even his passion, he realized. He had won the wager, he had made her moan in passion, he had held her in his hands and felt the wet heat of her desire upon his thigh, but he had won nothing. She stood and faced him as she had from the start. Smiling. Grim. Confident. As sure of her success as he was certain of her failure in this bout of hearts and minds and wills.

He was done with games. This was too vital. He needed this match too much to play at love with her, to play at seduction with her father's eye upon the outcome.

Twisting his hands into the long fall of her hair, he pulled her to him, holding her hard by the length of her hair bound about his fists. Her feet resisted; her hands upon his hands resisted; her eyes, as cold and hard as iron, resisted, fighting. Refusing.

But he had her in his hands. There was no escape from the tangle he had made. Jerking her to him so that she bumped into his chest, he lowered his mouth for a kiss as hard as her eyes. Hot, unrelenting, fighting against her win, pressing against her body, searching for the soft, dark glow of passion within her. It was there. He had touched it twice now and he could find it again. He would drag her to it again.

Her mouth was small and soft and wet and warm, and he plunged inside her, making a space for himself where she did not want him. He could feel the fight rise up in her, the tightened breath, the stiffened back, the death of all softness which she called forth from somewhere in her heart.

Let her call. He would defeat her. She was a woman, and he knew well the many paths into a woman's passion, though never before had he been made to fight his way into a woman's heart. Nay, his history was all of soft speech and careful flattery. With Juliane, such methods were like mist, broken upon her stony heart.

"I will have moans from you, Juliane," he said against her mouth. "I will have all from you. Deny me not."

"I deny you all!"

He tightened his hold on her, uncaring if he wrenched the hair from her scalp, and plunged hard into her mouth. She knew what she was about. She had been kissed, and kissed hard, before. Even as she resisted, she showed her skill at love.

And his anger surged the higher that her father had been so loose in his keeping of her.

Yet had she not been married, even for the small space of two days? Had he thought that she had known no kiss, no touch, no passion in all her days? Nay, he had known it, yet now, with her body beneath his mouth and his hands, and yet her heart so far from falling into the net of passion he set for her, he wanted no other to have touched her. He wanted her only and always for himself. He wanted to be the one to claim her and his claiming to be complete.

He wanted all the things a man wants when he wants a woman.

All the things a man was denied when the woman he wanted was Juliane le Gel.

"Deny me, then," he said, lifting his mouth from hers, trailing his lips down the arch of her neck, which lifted for him, no matter her words. "Give me not moans. Give me only your mouth."

"My mouth pleases you not."

"Nay, your mouth pleases me well. 'Tis your words I can live without."

She turned into his mouth, seeking him, smiling, broken of her anger for the moment, giving him what he asked as they stood in the stables in the heat of a sunny day, the smells of fodder all about them. 'Twas fitting. She was like an animal—wild, untamed, willful. And he was like an animal when he was near her. He had never been like this before, so out of joint, so out of peace and plan. With her, all was need and hunger and desperation.

Yet he was equally desperate for his plan to be met. He could not forget the course of his dreams in the battle of Juliane.

"More," he breathed, still holding her hard by the hair. He did not trust her. "Give me more. A kiss I must not force from you. A kiss of your own devising."

He felt her grin under his mouth and then the prick of steel upon his groin. He opened a space between them and looked down. She had her dagger upon his manhood. He dwindled instantly, but kept hard hold of her hair, like twin ropes of gold wrapped about his hands.

"Does the kiss of steel suit, my lord?" she asked. "Release me or I will cut you where you stand."

Her eyes were cold, yet in the depths of blue he could see the spark of desire.

"A knife will not cut against our passion, lady," he said, holding fast, pulling her into his heat again.

"Will you stand against a knife, my lord? I think not."

"Look and see."

And she looked. And she saw that he was rising high and hot again, her knife a shadow weapon he wagered she would not wield.

"I will not fall to you, lady. This I promised you from the start," he said, staring into her eyes. Confusion and indecision mingled like murky clouds in the clear blue of her eyes. The knife wavered.

"And I promised that I would not fall to passion, to pledges of love, to promises made in heated stables by a knight who has much to gain by gaining me. Stand off, sir knight, else I will cut myself free of you," and so saying, she lifted the knife to her hair, slicing through the strands to free herself from his hold.

He fast released her and quickly took the knife from her hand. She did not yield without some temper, but he was a knight and she was a woman. He could and did disarm her at his will.

"Nay, that you must not do," he said. A thick strand she had already cut and he picked it from her hair and held it carefully in his hand. "Your hair is too lovely to be given up in battle. I release you. For now."

"You have won the wager," she said, holding her ground, not backing away from his nearness. She was bold, and that was honest praise. "What will you have of me?"

"You. I want you."

She was golden in the glow of hazy light, tall and strong and fierce and feminine. He wanted her as he had rarely wanted a woman, with every bone in his body.

But with this woman, there was also profit in the having of her.

"Have you not said that I am not my own to give? These terms will not hold."

Truly said. It was in her father's will to grant her to a man. And with this wager won, he stood in good way to be the man.

"Then tell me this truth and the terms are paid. You trained the animals in your keeping to keep you safe from passion, did you not? The hawk, the horse—'twas not by chance that they aided you."

"To give you the answer you want from me would be to confess to being a cheat. I do not cheat. There is no need," she said with brimming arrogance.

"Not only a cheat, but a liar," he answered with a lopsided grin. A bold liar and an apt cheat; by the saints, there was much to like in Juliane of Stanora.

"If that be so, then we have much in common," she said with a slow grin, holding out her hand for her dagger.

He gave it to her freely. That battle was past. What new tactic would she use to thwart him?

By the saints, it would be something to see.

"Lady!" came a cry from without the stables. They both turned to face the sound. There was much desperation in it. "Lady! Your father has fallen ill; he sickens by the moment. Come!"

Without hesitation, they left their battle in the swirling dust of the stables and ran to the tower of Stanora.

* * *

"What has befallen?" Juliane asked as she hurried up the tower stairs. Avice had met her at the tower gate, a petite blade of sorrow swathed in pelisse and bliaut.

"His body failed him. He was carried to his chamber, and lies there still and unyielding, his face contorted. I know not more than that. Maud is with him now in his chamber," Avice said, sparing a glance for Ulrich.

Ulrich stayed within the great hall. The family of the lord of Stanora were what was needed now, not some guest of the house who was soon to be gone. The women of the house understood that, even if the men did not. Avice and Juliane told him all he needed to know of his place by ignoring him in total. They ran up the curving stairs, lifting their skirts in their hands.

The girls of the house, Christine, Marguerite, and Lunete, stood outside the door, whispering. Lunete was as white as new linen, her gray eyes watchful and huge. Juliane spared not a word for them but rushed past, through the door and into the lord's solar. The lord of Stanora lay upon his bed, his head propped high with pillows. His face was pallid, his skin covered in a sheen of sweat, his lips blue-tinged and parted, forcing air into his body. His manservant stood at his shoulder, holding a cup in his hands.

"Is that wine?" Juliane asked him. "Give it to him. 'Tis good for the blood."

"He refuses it, my lady," the man answered, his eyes darting and nervous. He did not want to be held to account if his lord died having refused the cup he bore.

"Drink, Father," Avice said, urging her father up by the strength of her arm behind his back. "Fortify yourself."

"The pain is past. I have ridden it down," he breathed, shaking his head slightly. Each word seemed to exhaust him past bearing.

"Fetch Father Matthew," Juliane said to the manservant, who quickly left the room, handing the cup to Juliane as he passed her.

"What would you have of me, Father?" Avice asked.

"Your prayers," he said in whisper, laying his full weight against her arm. She could not lift him without his aid. With a frown, she let him fall back upon the pillows. "Gather them, Juliane," he commanded. "It is my time."

Juliane looked hard into her father's face, her blue eyes fierce, and then she nodded. She would do as he asked. It would soothe him, if nothing else. She turned and left her father to Avice, passing Father Matthew in the doorway.

"His time is upon him. I go to begin it," she said.

Father Matthew nodded and entered the room. All was quiet within, the only sound being of Avice's whispered prayers on behalf of her father's soul.

* * *

It took only a week for them to come. Walter, Philip's only surviving son, came from his fostering at a gallop, his red hair a sweaty cap upon his fair head. He threw the reins of his horse to a groom, ran up the steps three at a time, and kept running until he reached his father's chamber.

It was not good.

The chamber was crowded with the men who formed the circle of Philip's life: his priest, his chief knight, his closest companions. All were arrayed within the chamber, all watching Philip take his leave of this life and prepare himself for the next. And now his son was come among them, his only son, to whom everything would fall as Philip made for heaven.

"Walter," Philip said from his bed, his skin of a shade to match the linens at his back.

Walter came and crouched by his father's side, taking his hand in his own. His father's skin was thin and dry, wasted of life like an autumn leaf.

"Father, what would you have of me? Your will is mine."

His father's eyes were so pale a blue now as to be like clearest glass, reflecting the hope of heaven and eternal peace like costly church glass, pale yet turned upon his son with all the fervor of last wishes.

"The cloths I brought with me from across the sea, you know of which I speak?" Walter nodded. "Let them be spread upon my body when I am laid in earth."

"Where, Father?"

"Fair son," Philip said with a smile, "next to my lady wife and I shall be content."

"It will be done," Walter answered.

"And as for you," Philip continued, his own life and death accounted for, "you shall have Stanora and Portesdone."

"Yea, Father," Walter answered. It was as it should be; he was the only son and inheritor of all his father's land. But what of his sisters?

"Avice is betrothed," Philip said, reminding the throng that stood about them, marking all, recording all in the event that any question was raised as to the lord of Stanora's disposition of his earthly goods. Death was a public event, and they watched to see how well and nobly Philip died. "See her married within the month of my death. I would have no disputes raised that she and you must face. Let all be cleanly done and well."

"She goes to Arthur of Clairvaux, that I know. All will be done as you have arranged."