Conqueror (13 page)

“Oh, aye? Then why do we go over this same matter time and again?”

Alex’s face hardened. “
Because there is treasure to be guarded
. Or do you not believe?”

Griffyn leaned forward, across the table. “I’ll tell you what I believe, Alex,” he said in a low, swift voice. “I believe greed and fear exist, and that is what motivates men. Holiness does not, or rarely. Goodness makes them attack. Legends of hidden treasure excite them like nothing else.
I do not want it
.” He threw himself back on the bench and pushed his fingers through his hair. “I do not want what it makes men become.”

He stared across the room. His men were dim bundled shapes stretched out in front of the fire. Rain slammed against the shutters.

“In you flows a thousand years of blood, Griffyn,” Alex replied quietly. “’Tis too weighty a thing to ignore. Your life is not your own.”

Griffyn’s fingers tightened on the mug. “My choices are.”

“You’re the Guardian, Griffyn,” Alex insisted in an urgent, low voice. “You must accept that.”

Griffyn looked over. “And you are a Watcher, Alex. Not my father.”

Alex’s face hardened. “Aye. I am a Watcher. I protect you. I do my duty.”

Griffyn’s face creaked into a smile. “Call it duty if you will, Alex; we all of us make choices.”

“And yours has been to reject this destiny since the day your father died. Do you think that will make it go away?”

“No,” Griffyn said dully. “Nothing will.”

Nothing would ever make the awful truth of whom he was destined to become go away. The treasure in Everoot’s vaults had a long legacy of destruction. Powerful enough to inspire quests and madness, holy enough to bring kings crashing to their knees, it had simply crushed his father and Ionnes de l’Ami under the weight of its want.

Its existence was barely breathed aloud in the secret councils of those who suspected, but the rumours persisted.
In Egypt. The Languedoc. Jerusalem!
No one knew for certain it even existed, let alone where it was.

No one supposed it was in a remote English donjon, stripped of any glory and even the light of day.

And Griffyn was its Guardian.

He stared at the curling burl lines of the wooden table, not seeing wood, but his father’s raging, wild face. He wanted to be nothing like Christian Sauvage. And, in his heart, he knew he could be nothing other.

Brutal, sinful, wasted and wrecked by greed.
That
was his destiny.

“Griffyn,” Alex’s soft voice intruded.

He snapped his gaze up and stared at his lifelong companion. Alex reached out and clamped his hand over Griffyn’s clenched one, which was fisted on the tabletop.

“I don’t know why you think it matters what we want, friend,” Alex said, almost sadly. “You are what you have been bred to be. Charlemagne’s heir. You carry the burden: Guardian of the Grail Hallows. And for good or for ill, Griffyn, our hope lies in you.”

He tore his hand free. “Call me Pagan when she is about.”

He grabbed his mug and walked out.

Ahh, had God created anything more perfect than a bath? Anything better than warm, scented steam rising from hot water, lapping at your chest and chin? Better than the feeling of being clean again?

Gwyn decided not. She leaned her head back against the tub and closed her eyes. The room was Pagan’s, without a doubt. It had his musky odour of maleness. The realisation that this was pleasing brought her eyes open again.

Why was she
not
frightened, lying in a tub in a strange man’s boarding room? The night was like some strangely stretched version of reality that warped and shifted as she walked through it. Dowered. Saturated. Weeping with it.

But there was something about Pagan, something that seemed honourable, however his physical presence brought to mind granite cliffs. However his behaviour, prior to and following their strange passion-dance, sent her mind into dizzying spirals that spurned sense. In fact, he seemed—

He seemed to be coming up the stairs, if the sound of thumping boots reckoned rightly.

She scrambled naked out of the tub, dripping wet, and darted her gaze around the room. Her clothes, filthy, mangled, muddy, were near the door. If she ran for them, she’d be caught.
What was she to wear?

Griffyn kicked the door open and stepped into the chamber with two flagons of ale atop a tray. Twenty minutes of grooming Noir had finally combed out the agitated remnants of his own tangled emotions following the conversation with Alex, and as he walked back through the lashing winds and rain, he’d realised all he wanted was to sit with Guinevere. Just sit with her. Forget about the world for awhile. Mayhap make her laugh.

He balanced the tray and peered around until he found her. Out of the tub, standing by the small table, avoiding his eye and fingering the edge of a red…a red…

“What is that?”

Her wet head lifted, revealing a chagrined smile. “I had nothing else to wear.”

He cocked his head to the side. “And so you chose…ahhh,” he exhaled in understanding. The empty spot on the wall where one of his tapestries had hung explained the outlandish tunic draped around her.

He briefly ran his gaze along her body, then turned to the table and set down the tray of ale. Aye. Much better to be here, with her beauty, than downstairs, alone with the grinding memories.

He kicked the door shut behind him. “Come.” He gestured to the table.

Her bare feet padded over the planks of wood. She sat on the bench he had pulled out. She looked at him a moment, her elfin face bright, scrubbed clean. He set the tray on the table. She stared at his hands.

“Did I take your bathwater?”

He quirked an eyebrow. “Am I that dirty? Your message has gone off.”

“And you’ve my undying thanks. For too many things to count.”

He stood squarely in the centre of the room and stared into the brazier fire, deciding it was better by far
not
to look at her. Her hair was drying in a curling mass of dark silk, tossed over her shoulder. The crimson tapestry had slipped off one shoulder.

A light tap came on the door. He waved Gwyn into the bedchamber and opened it. Maude stood with a tray of food in her outstretched arms.

“Food, my lord,” she whispered, as if it were a most secretive package.

He smiled faintly and took the proffered offerings. “Come,” he called to the dark opening of the bedchamber, laying the tray on the table. “Eat.”

It took all of five seconds for her to arrive at the edge of the table, curling her toes and nearly drooling. He watched as she descended on the simple fare with a gusto uncommon among soldiers on campaign, wondering idly if she would gnaw through the wooden plates once all the food was gone.

“Good,” she mumbled through a mouth filled with bread crust and cheese.

“Umm.” He splashed more ale into her mug and thumped it down in front of her.

Nodding her thanks, she sloshed a solid third of it down her gullet before coming up for air. He shook his head, bemused.

Becoming aware of his scrutiny, she lifted her head from the feeding trough to look at him. He stared back.

“Aren’t you going to sit?” she asked.

He dropped onto the small bench opposite her, tilted the bench back, and crossed his arms over his chest.

Dark green eyes travelled the length of his torso, then back to his face. “And eat?”

He obediently picked up a hunk of cheese and popped it into his mouth.

Her lips curved into a smile. “You are quite biddable.”

“Oh, quite.”

“Always?”

“More so than you, I’ll wager.”

The laugh that greeted this was utterly marvelous. Her face was dissolved in gentle laughter, and the dark tresses pulled back over her shoulders revealed delicate features of shoulder and neck. His gaze travelled down, drawn to a nasty bruise discolouring her exposed skin.

The bench thumped forward. “You’re hurt.” He ran a finger over the bruise on her shoulder, a soldier’s swift appraisal. A ripple of goosebumps sped under his hand. He froze.

She was blushing a pale shade of pink. Dark, wet hair hung in tangled locks across the scarlet linen and her white shoulder, creating a startling contrast in colours. The combination of such an ethereal face and the sudden, innocent desire dawning there made him snatch his hand back as if burned.

“I’ll tend it when you’re done,” he said roughly.

She ducked her head and muttered some inaudible reply. She could have said Stephen’s army was marching for the inn and he wouldn’t have heard. Such a hard, hot pounding hadn’t surged through him in many a year. It was so powerful and close at hand he felt short of breath.

“What did you say?” he asked, dimly aware she’d been speaking.

The query brought her head up, which he did not want at all. It would be better if she kept her head wrapped in a poultice all night long. No, he amended, glancing at the body concealed beneath a thin layer of linen and nothing else, her entire body should be swathed in woollen, wrapped from hairline to toes.

“I said, I did not expect such a thing as all this from my night,” she murmured. “Did you?”

He groaned audibly. This would never do. She could be swathed in sacks and buried under a haystack and it would not help. Already the image of her stretched out and sighing beneath him, black hair streaming over the pillows, was more vivid than the whole past year of his life.

“Nay, I never expected such a thing as you.”

She smiled faintly. “Fools, I think we agreed.”

“Without sense.”

“Entirely.”

He drew back, leveled his tone. “I would have you regain yours, Raven, ere something happens you’ll be sorry for.”

“Sorry?” She shook her head, her smile fading. “I think not. I have regrets, ’tis true—”

“So do I, and I would not have this night become one of them.”

She looked around, at the worn furniture, the glow of the brazier coals, water dripping down the stone pathways in the walls in narrow, silent rivulets. “I am convinced we too often measure regret against the ways of the world.”

“There are worse things.”

“Even so, that would not protect me tonight. The things of the world are far away right now. I can scarce recall them to mind.”

“I can,” he said firmly. “You like mushrooms, but hate eel. You think yourself foolish, but wish for a certain blue gown. You can afford neither the dye or cloth, so never buy a bolt of a lesser fabric. Your steward—William of the Five Strands, no?—does not see to the fish traps as he ought. The harvest was never fully brought in this year, and may never be again. Too many have died. Once, you had a dream of the window in your mother’s bedroom being fitted with stained glass, like a chapel, for she’s an angel to you now, and it would bring her closer to home.”

Gwyn’s lower jaw started to fall open as he worked his way through her panicked ramblings from the beginning of their ride, partially verbatim, partly paraphrased, but dead on in content. By the time he reached “an angel to you now,” she was staring open-mouthed.

“Pagan! I did not even know you were listening!”

“Oh, I was listening,” he murmured in a steel-edged voice, his restraint drawn to snapping. “And you ought listen to
me
right now, little bird:
Be careful
.”

“Sensible, you mean.”

“Most assuredly.”

She paused, and he had a momentary thought he might escape unscathed. That she would do the prudent thing, save him from this rampaging desire. But her next words smashed the thin hope, taking him with it like water over a falls.

“Sense is only one way to know a thing, Pagan,” she whispered. “I’m sure we could find another.”

In a single move he was up, around the table, his arms around her waist, pulling her to her feet. He swept her hair off from her face. The half-dried curls picked up coppery glints from the firelight and her hair glowed in a black-fire curtain of silk around the delicate, sense-damaging beauty of her face. Their lips were inches apart; he could feel each shaky breath she dragged into her lungs.

“God forgive me,” he muttered, then plunged in after his words.

Their mouths locked, hard and greedy. He claimed her with no gentleness; the moment was betide and he moved in with unchecked assurance. Her hair was like silk, and her skin hot. Her lips were parted wide beneath him, her tongue meeting him with every stroke. He gathered fistfuls of her hair, gripping the dark silk with savage passion, and cupped them at the nape of her neck. When she dropped her head back and moaned into his mouth, it almost broke him.

Gwyn knew nothing but that her life was changed forever. Wide-open and demanding, his hands engulfed her ribs. He bent her backwards and plied her mouth wide, hunting deep in the recesses of her mouth, dragging free shuddering sensations she’d never dreamed of before, pulsing, hot, greedy urges.

He pushed her backwards with gentle, insistent hands and, when her buttocks pressed against the table, he stepped between her knees. Flexing the muscles in his thighs, he lifted her off the ground and pressed her onto the table, his hands and mouth like a well-informed thief intent on its plunder.

His body was a wall of heat and muscle, the tapestry a thin veil he would heed only so long. His powerful thighs were between her knees, muscles pressing forward. His hands were everywhere, coaxing her body into moves she’d never imagined before, bending back, reaching up, her hips sliding in an unconscious rhythm. Firm, thick fingers cupped her head and lifted her half off the table to his mouth, until her torso was stretched against his and she could feel his hammering heart. His arousal was hard and pushing ever closer to the place that quivered and wept moist desire. Invading her.

“Do you know what I want to do to you?” he rasped against her lips. She was nodding, knowing nothing, certain of everything.

His hand slid up her ribs and closed around her breast. Gwyn’s world slewed sideways. He was a magician, he knew exactly what he was doing to her, working her with expert caresses, making her cry out in longing and hope for some unknown release. Never before had she felt heat where she felt it now, sizzling through her blood, throbbing between her legs. He moulded his hands against the tapestry like it was her skin, seducing her, loosing little rivers of hot wanting that pulsed up and down her spine, laying claim with such breathtaking skill her body bucked of its own accord.