Conquer the Night (23 page)

She allowed her lashes to fall.

No surrender.

No quarter.

He did not hate her so much!

Nay
…

Not then.

He moved like fire, and she was aware of the feel of his flesh, and his touch, and the fullness of his sex within her, the pulse of his heart and muscle and sinew. She knew his strength, his texture, the feel of the linen beneath her, the touch of his flesh. She was so aware of every detail of the man, and yet she was not; she was aware of the thunder, the fire, the blaze that centered where they merged, the hunger, the longing. Nothing real mattered; the hunger mattered, the aching, the reaching, the fire … and then … the moment that burst upon her in a startling blaze, just a moment, yet blue fire, sweet blue fire, burning into her, searing sweet, staggering, sweeping breath away, steeling her limbs, plundering all logic and reason….

She heard the snap and crackle of the fire. She saw the shadows play against the stone walls of the castle. She felt him, rock muscled, still against her, flesh still fire, but passion spent. Sprawled. He was sprawled atop her. Weary, satiated—self-satisfied. He'd set out to seduce; he'd seduced. And suddenly the fact that she'd been so easily and so completely seduced dismayed and infuriated her, and she wanted nothing more than to be free of his hard, sleek limbs and the very casual way he remained spent, but draped upon her.

The way he lay there was almost like …

A swagger.

She burned. She blushed through every pore of her body.

“Off, dear God, off!” she cried out, pressing desperately at his massive frame.

“Jesu, my lady—”

“I can't breathe!”

He shifted instantly, but he was still at her side, and his arm was around her, pinning her. His eyes were on hers, narrowed and sharp.

“Please …”

“Ah, there you go. You do use that word well. Please … what?”

“Get away from me. I—I told you. I can't breathe.”

“I think that you're breathing just fine.”

“No, I'm not. Please. Get up, go away! Let me up. You've had what you wanted.”

“Ah, Kyra, indeed, poor lady. You were so wretchedly seized! I have been cruel to you in the extreme!”

“You are cruel.”

He laughed softly.

She gritted her teeth, tried to strike out at him. He caught her arm, still smiling. “No surrender, my lady? Who meant to seduce whom?”

She gasped, staring at him. Newly infuriated, she struggled like a wildcat.

“Stop!” He laughed. “You're furious with me because—”

“I was wretchedly seized!”

“Because you dropped your sword before the first blow was delivered.” He tried to smooth a tangle of hair from her face. She tossed her head to avoid his touch, but he caught her cheeks between his hands and met her eyes and warned her, “Ah, Kyra, take care. You'll come to crave my touch, and I will be gone.”

“Hanged, drawn and quartered!” she retorted.

He laughed softly, and his reply was as quietly spoken. “Maybe.”

She went dead still, staring at him. “There's no maybe about it; Edward will hunt you down. He means to have Scotland from east to west and north to south.”

“Then life should be lived to the fullest.”

“Your life, sir, is your own to cast away.”

“But I am very much alive tonight.”

“I am not; I am exhausted.”

“Amazing. I'd not have known.”

She struggled again, dying to strike him.

“If you're truly exhausted, we can sleep.”

“I don't want to sleep with you. I don't want to be with you; you're mistaken in what you think was acquiescence.”

“I thought that it was more than acquiescence.”

“I cannot stay in this room!”

“You must stay in this room—you will stay in this room. You may have your charms, Lady Kyra, but you remain the enemy. Seduced though I may be, I don't forget who I am for a minute, or that you are Edward's beloved subject. But I'd not make you any more wretched tonight. Feel free to rest on the floor, my lady. You can always sleep on the furs before the fire.”

“I can sleep on the furs before the fire! You are incredibly rude, so discourteous! You go sleep on the furs by the fire.”

“But I was not the one complaining, my lady. I am content where I am.”

Blue shadows, blue flames, and all seemed to reflect the blue in his eyes. “I am content where I am,” he repeated. His expression was grave. He smoothed back her hair, and she didn't protest, but met his gaze.

“Shall I make you stay with me?” he whispered.

“If you would have me here—aye!”

A small, grim smile curved his lips. “You can live with being forced, my lady. But you cannot live with any form of surrender?”

“If there is force, one can only fight.”

“Or bide one's time,” he pointed out.

“Time, sir, is not with you.”

He stroked her cheek. “That much is true. Sleep with me, my lady.”

She closed her eyes.

“I am forcing you,” he whispered.

He pulled her against him. She made no protest. It was absurdly comfortable to feel his chest at her back, his body curved around her own.

“Don't love me too much,” he murmured, and his voice was teasing at her nape. And yet, she thought, there was an edge to it.

An edge she felt as well.

“I do not love you at all!” she protested, stiffening.

The tension seemed to leave him. He laughed, and the sound was soft and low and pleasant in the night.

“Alas, my lady, how cold. When I am truly beginning not to hate you at all.”

“For being Kinsey Darrow's?”

“Um.” His arms tightened around her. “Indeed,” he murmured, “I am beginning to forget that you were ever his.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Mounted on Pict, Arryn watched as his men drilled with schiltrons, a formation in which they formed tight ranks and used sharpened pikes. With ten men in each group, they created a bastion effective against English cavalry. His men, and the armies of such men as William Wallace and Andrew de Moray, were made up of what the English called rabble, except for Andrew de Moray himself, who was a rich and powerful man in the north, as his father had been before him. Many of his family members had been seized at Dunbar, and now counted down the hours imprisoned in England or forced to fight for the king in France.

But what the armies were really made of were the people. Customarily, it was the magnates—the rich men, the aristocracy of the country—who fought. They paid their armies, made warriors of them, and knighted them on the field. But in this fight for Scotland, most of the aristocracy and the rich were compromised—they often held lands in England and in Scotland, and even if they did not, they might well have signed the oath of fealty, the ragman rolls, and thus had to take great care with what they did. Many of Scotland's great barons had fought the king of England at Dunbar after the slaughter at Berwick, and there they had been beaten and imprisoned, taken to England to the Tower, or forced to fight for Edward in his eternal battle against the French. Some had to take care, lest they give Edward a reason to execute their imprisoned relations, and though Edward promised relief to the Scotsmen who fought his continental battles for him, it was said that he didn't intend to keep his promise there any more than he had meant to keep the promise he had made before John Balliol became king—that he would leave Scottish matters to the Scots.

Nay, the men with whom they now fought were not typical. They were not the sons of rich men and barons, taught from childhood to wield heavy weapons. Some were the sons of nobility, aye, the younger sons of lesser nobility, but most were simply Scotland's freemen, her landowners, farmers, merchants, masons, and fishermen. They had risen because of such atrocities as the massacre at Berwick; they had banded against the English because Edward had given his noblemen their daughters. They were the very soul of the country.

But the soul needed training.

Against many of his men was the fact that when the English came with a full army, that army was always accompanied by exceptional Welsh bowmen—Edward knew how to flatten a country, and how to draw from it. The Welsh had perfected the art of the longbow, and they could cause a rain of death to fall upon the enemy. Arryn's men needed to learn the use of the crude shields he had them carving daily as shelter, just as they needed to learn to use them against the English swordsmen and cavalry who would come to slice and hack them down as if they were so much wheat in the field.

“Run it again … hard, fast, form rank, fall!” he shouted out, watching as the second group he had chosen for the schiltrons came forward. They were dedicated; they were good.

They were ill paid because they were not the soldiers of a great overlord; they took their chances when they rode against the English. Here, at least, they had sacked the riches of the castle, and it had contained a great deal of value. They had seized silver, gold, jewels, fine fabrics, and more important here and now, they had seized weapons, harnesses, horses, and food.

He looked up suddenly, feeling as if he was being watched. He was.

She stood upon the parapets of the outer wall and watched. He frowned, perplexed, wondering how she had escaped her tower room. They had been here five days now, and at the moment he was feeling particularly at odds with her, and irritated with himself that he should let her cause him to feel anything at all. In the nights since they had buried the fallen dead, she had refused to come down to dinner. He might have forced her down; he had chosen not to—though her absence had irked him. Still, it had seemed important to him that she not overestimate her own worth to their efforts. He had thought her more than resigned to his company after the night they made love—aye, made love; he had taken great care to seduce her—but the morning had brought her a greater distance from him than ever, and though he had thought he understood, her distance made him aware that he had given in far more than she. His wife's murder had been brutal. He had been with other women since then, had seduced, been seduced, even laughed since then. But this was Kinsey Darrow's betrothed; he was not supposed to be gentle and kind, nor give a damn as to her feelings on the matter. Yet she left him shaken, and still … beguiled. It was not surprising that such an exceptionally beautiful woman could create a wealth of lust, but it was irritating, a chafe to his temper, that he should find himself not at all appeased, and wanting to hear the sound of her voice, the soft peal of her laughter, feel the touch of her fingertips against his flesh … see her smile, hear her protest, feel her in the night as she slept against him. She was just a woman; Kinsey Darrow's woman, at that. He lived far too often with haunting dreams of Alesandra calling his name, of her screaming as the flames rose around her….

He lived, he breathed, he fought, he was human, he risked all for his country. He needed companionship. But Scotland was filled with beautiful women, rich and poor, ardent for freedom, fond of such a passionate rebel. Those who knew they played a wretchedly dangerous game, that life was fickle, easily ended. While this one …

She had said that she always fought. He had thought she had given in. Maybe a battle, but never the war.

Don't love me too much!
he had taunted, because she had given in, or been swept away, or perhaps just shown the age-old wonder of what existed between men and women. Had he been too pleased, gloating?

I
don't love you at all!
she had assured him.

And she had spent the last two nights curled in a ball on the furs before the fire. He had left her there. It had been painful. She would have come if he had forced her into bed. She would have had the luxury of keeping her pride intact, but he had found himself pitched into a battle of wills. Still, he had stubbornly determined that he would not allow her to consider herself so unbearably appealing—and he had put up a good pretense of ignoring her completely. Except that last night, he had managed only half the night, departing in the middle of it to sit brooding before the blaze in the great hall. She had sworn her fealty to Edward—and to Darrow. He had taken the castle, he had taken her, and now he could be done with both.

Why did he let her bother him so?

Guilt?

He suffered enough guilt every time he thought of Hawk's Cairn.

He had come here with such venom in his heart. His vision had been clear: destroy Kinsey Darrow, his riches—and the woman he had loved. But she wasn't what he had expected, and sometimes he remembered that he had known her father, and sometimes he realized that she was a child of the aristocracy, and marriage was a bartering system, not a union entered for love. Sometimes he admired her, and liked the way she fought, and wished that he had more men who had her constant supply of courage and determination against all odds.

Aye, he thought dryly, they needed more warriors such as this lady.

Don't love me too much
.…

He was coming to admire her too much. He couldn't forget that, though he had liked her father, Hugh Boniface's loyalty to Edward had been steadfast and indisputable. He had given homage to Alexander as well—in a time of grace and peace now gone. Sad indeed that the king of England should be so greedy, wanting the island to be his from north to south, east to west, and France as well. Maybe that was for the best, since the king himself remained in France, and he might have able warriors, but none so ruthless as himself. He was near sixty; he was still nearly seven feet tall in his full armor, rough, rugged, and ever ready to fight. If only he had not been born with the streak of cruelty that seemed to run among the Plantagenets, he might have proved to be an admirable king.

But there had been Berwick….

Arryn kept his eyes on Kyra. She appeared restless. Perhaps she was growing weary of the confinement she had set upon herself. Perhaps she was trying to distract him from his training. She was capable of distracting men; that much was certain. And therein lay the danger. It would be far too easy to forget that she owed her loyalty—and gave it freely—to the king who had massacred almost the whole of what had been a great and thriving town.