Faerie (6 page)

A
N OATH CLUNG
to the tip of Philippe’s tongue, but thankfully got no farther. His gaze was fixed on the twitch of arrogance in the lady’s swaying hips. Even her tied-back rope of impossible curls swung back and forth to the rhythm of her steps.

“I told you,” said the Brodin knight, Gerard. Smirking, he held out his palm.

Philippe fumbled a coin out of his pouch and plopped it into the knight’s hand. The knight snickered.

“It must be magic,” grumbled Michael, adding his coin to the growing pile in Gerard’s hand.

“Nay,” replied Philippe as he frowned, his nostrils flaring with the bitter remembrance. “It lacks the stench. Magic is always evil. This was talent. Did you not see how she handled those arrows? When I return, I vow I will force her to show me that trick.”

Gerard laughed and tossed his newly plump purse to the Brodin knights to divide their booty. “Not magic, but she does deceive you. ’Tis skill and much practice, not the bow. Although it surely is the finest I have ever seen. I have pulled it myself, but it did nothing for me.”

The Brodin knights burst into a guffaw.

“Naught could help you, Gerard,” said one named Ivo. “’Tis a good thing you are a knight. Were you a huntsman, you would starve.”

Philippe handed his bow to his squire and glanced back at where the straw dummy sprawled on the ground. A small shudder passed through him, remembering those shafts to the groin.

Geoffrey clapped a hand to his shoulder. “Do not take it to heart, my friend.”

“She gulled me again. I should have known better. But I thought I could beat her this time.”

“Nay, you gulled yourself.” Geoffrey laughed. “She tried to avoid the contest. She does not like to be thought unwomanly, you see.”

Philippe could not think of a woman more unwomanly. Yet she had an allure that grasped him by the heart. Or by the bollocks, to be more truthful. He counted four times now that he’d had a good view of her enticing backside.

He frowned. The girl was dangerous to him. He needed to get away from the little lioness of Brodin Castle as soon as he could.

“You do her no favors to allow her such freedom, Geoffrey. A husband might beat her for such audacity.”

Geoffrey sighed as he started back up the slope to the upper bailey. “I fear it is in the blood. Her mother was the same, and it did not serve her well. The girl does try hard to please, though. I can only hope Rufus chooses her husband well.”

“Yet who would he choose? I fear for her, Geoffrey.”

“Fulk of Durham, mayhap.”

Philippe’s head jerked up. “Fulk, the Warrior of God? May God help her, then.”

“You do not approve? He is a pious man.”

“He is a mountain of righteous arrogance, and arrogance does not tolerate other arrogance. He will beat her. No man likes to be challenged, and he most of all.”

“You sought out the challenge, did you not? Are there not other men who measure their worth by more than the strength of their arm?”

“Strength is what the world values.”

“Is it? Fine knight though you are, you are replaceable, for more new knights grow to manhood every day. But your way of making peace is unequaled, and Rufus would be hard put to find a man with your wisdom at politics. Nor, if I were king, would I wish you anywhere but where you have been placed.”

“At Bosewood? I did not choose it, nor want it. But I do my king’s bidding.”

“Aye, I know. He could have none more fiercely loyal than you. He values you most for that. You go to Bosewood next?”

“Not immediately. I’ll send my knights ahead, but I have more of the king’s business I must attend first. Business with the border.”

“Truly, there will be trouble, then?”

“Truly. Malcolm will likely go from raiding to invading. But Rufus means to forestall him. If trouble comes, you will need to call your knights and soldiers to arms.”

“I’ll be ready.”

Already the knights of the hall were enjoying another round of ale, toasting to their female champion. At least they approved what she did for their purses. Philippe suspected the servants would be very late in folding away the trestle tables this night. As for himself, he expected a merciless ragging from the king’s knights.

He laughed to himself. Although he had thought he might win this time, he had many times bragged to his men it was a woman who was the finest archer in all England, perhaps in all Christendom. He just had not known she would drub him so badly.

Something about it made his soul tingle. Perhaps if he were not a man cursed.

But he was.

The stifling heat still lingered in the solar. Only a whiff of breeze passed through the lancet window, not even enough to stir the bed curtains, but out beyond the castle walls the black branches and leaves swayed quietly against the bright moonlit sky.

Beside her sleeping cousin, Leonie lay in her thin chemise atop her covers. She could not sleep. She could not shake the thoughts of the Peregrine from her head.

She rose so quietly the bed’s ropes did not creak, and padded silently across the ladies’ chamber. The door to the solar groaned on its massive metal hinges. She hesitated, but seeing Claire did not stir, Leonie skimmed through the solar and out its door into the night.

The cool shaft of night air lapped at her face and sent long, pale tendrils of hair dancing around her cheeks, relieving the stickiness beneath her chemise as she descended the steps. Even the stone felt cool to the bare soles of her feet. Soon she landed on the paving stones of the upper bailey, strangely deserted and nearly silent, save for an owl’s hoot and the chittering of the nightjar. In the distance, the rush of water hissed over the rapids in the beck.

She had no destination, only a need that drove her through the dark gloom of the upper gatehouse to the lower bailey, lit by a moon so full her Fae sight was unneeded. The breeze tickled her skin, yet a hazy mist trailed at her feet like an eager litter of puppies. A September fog, though it was hot August. Wind and fog did not meet in such a way.

From the fog appeared the straw manikin, swinging from a rope at the quintain like a criminal hanged. An arrow protruded from its crotch like a limp shaft. Yet it was reversed, the triangular iron head dangling down.

The manikin was a man. The golden-haired Peregrine, his flesh silvered by the moonlight. The arrow shaft became erect, thick, long, and hard.

“You wound me, lady.” She knew his voice, for its low rasp had spoken to her in many dreams.

“Nay. You are whole.”

“Not whole.”

The man stood before her, not hanging from the rope.

“You should not wander alone at night, lady.”

“I am safe. It is my uncle’s castle.”

“You will never be safe.”

That was true. It was why she would never run, but also why she would never say it.

“What is it you want, lady? Do you seek a forfeit?”

“You did not pay the last one. Why should I ask one of you this time?”

“Is that what you want, lady? A kiss?”

She felt the hot flush growing on her face, flooding her body, for she was of the Faeriekind and her blood ran hot. Only human women had to be taught to know man-pleasure.

She turned to face him and was lost in the dark honey depth of his eyes. His lips looked hard, yet soft, as they parted and revealed the white tips of his teeth.

She licked her own lips as she raised a finger to trace the artful curves of his mouth. His tongue touched to her fingertips. She closed her eyes and felt the touch of his lips to hers, like the light caress of a feather.

“What do you want, Leonie?” his ragged voice asked. “Do you want more?”

“Aye,” she whispered.

Cool breeze and hot flesh tormented her shoulders as the loose chemise was pushed down. Roughened hands slid around her breasts, lifted them, and rubbed her virgin nipples between finger
and thumb. The heat in her body grew, like sharp tendrils coiling downward, jabbing like strokes of lightning at the ache of passion growing inside her.

“Do you want more?” whispered the Peregrine
.

“Aye.”

The baggy chemise drifted past her thighs and vanished as if it melted into the air. Her moonlight-silver skin touched the Peregrine’s sun-tinged flesh, felt the hardness beneath its surface, great corded muscles and the rippling male planes of his chest.

His hand slid between her legs and up, to find that strange nub that housed passion. It had no name as other body parts did, not like an arm or leg, nor even a shaft. But it was like a shaft, excited, swollen, aching, begging for the touch of his hand.

“You would be a man, but you would have a woman’s pleasures? You are unseemly. You play the man and you play the whore. But you are neither, nor are you what you should be. Nay, lioness, you shall have no pleasure from me.”

The Peregrine removed his hands from her body. He dropped a mocking bow and turned away.

And disappeared into the fog.

With a jerk, Philippe sat up and looked around him. The pallet where he had lain down was still beneath him, and he was still in the solar of his friend Geoffrey, his knights sleeping nearby. But his body said he had been somewhere else.

The heated ache in his shaft was more than a dream, for it stood hard and erect from the long fingers that had curled about it.

Nay, no fingers enclosed his shaft. He had dreamed. Yet he could feel them still, as real as any that had ever touched him.

Hugh rose up on one elbow, cocking his head in curiosity.

Philippe frowned back. “It is too hot,” he said.

He rose from his pallet and went out the solar door, down the steps, and across the bailey. He dashed up the stone steps to the parapet, and the guard stopped his pacing to watch.

“Too hot,” he said again. “It’s cooler here.”

“Aye,” said the guard. “’Tis a fine summer night. Too soon it will be cold winter.”

Philippe nodded and turned to walk along the wall. It was at least cool enough to dampen his ardor. He had been without a woman for a very long time, but he had made his vow and he meant to keep it. And, God’s holy face, he was not about to let a wench seduce him in his own dreams.