Knights of de Ware 01 - My Champion (23 page)

Her breath grew shallow. She dared not look at him.

“Then,” he breathed against the corner of her mouth, “I pressed my crude…lips…so.”

His mouth closed over hers as if she were a chalice of sweet wine, his tongue flicking lightly along the rim of her lips, tasting her, tempting her. She closed her eyes tightly, fighting her own desires, willing the embers glowing inside her to subside. But it was useless. His kiss stole the very thoughts from her brain.

For one brief moment, he withdrew, granting her respite from the chaotic emotions clouding her mind. For an instant, she could almost think.

Then he kissed her again. This time he embraced her completely, plundering her senses, devouring her with all the ardor of a starving man. Her blood rushed through her ears, as if he’d summoned it all the way from her toes. Every inch of her skin responded to his touch like iron filings awakening to a lodestone.

Even when he pulled away at last, when his thumb brushed her bottom lip, she felt the lingering molten heat of his kiss. She could no more silence the ragged sigh that slipped out between her teeth, the sigh that pleaded for more, than she could stop the tides.

She never meant to surrender. But once she felt the demand of his searching mouth, once the muscles of his body contoured themselves to her, all care ceased. She knew only that she wanted…something more.

Duncan knew what she wanted. And he fully intended to appease her. He released her hands—hands grown limp in his—to wrap one possessive arm around her back. Then, to his amazement, before he could muster his forces for another onslaught, the hungry little vixen threw herself with abandon against him, into a kiss of her own making. She crushed her breasts against his ribs and opened her mouth to him, exploring his shoulders, his face, his hair with frenzied hands.

And he lost control.

Never,
never
had it happened before. He’d made love to dozens of women, kissed scores more. God’s bones, the de Ware brothers were the envy of the barony when it came to seduction. But always he was in control. It was he who set the pace, planned each move, each word, and knew the moment of surrender. He always knew how far he could go and how to gracefully back away. Now, for the first time, he was utterly and completely powerless to stop himself.

She’d astonished him by responding to his kiss with an eager passion as heady as fine wine. Her body clung to him like a well-made garment, and her lips were musky-sweet as they murmured and kissed and sighed against his. Her hair felt like silk between his fingertips, and the warmth of her belly pressing against his loins made him throb with longing.

God, he craved her.

Faith, Linet realized, coming up for air, she wanted him—his kisses, his caresses, his bold, powerful arms about her. The blood sang in her veins. She wanted him with every fiber of her being. And she might have surrendered, might have let him take her at once…

Were it not for the chickens.

The soft clucking of roosting hens suddenly seemed to fill the close air of the barn, reminding her of the world this man belonged to. It was a world her father had striven relentlessly to claw his way out of. A world where the name of de Montfort was utterly insignificant. A world that she’d sworn to Lord Aucassin on his deathbed she’d never enter.

She pulled back, gently at first, then with increasing urgency, ultimately bringing her hand around to his cheek and pushing his lips from hers. “Stop,” she gasped.

His passion-glazed eyes were laced with pain. “You want me. I know you do,” he whispered. “Why do you resist?”

“I don’t want you,” she choked. “I…I despise you.”

“Liar.”

“Let me go!” she insisted, pounding twice on his chest.

He caught her fists within his palms and said hoarsely, “You don’t despise me, Linet. You only fear me. Nay, you fear your own desire.”

She struggled against him, against the urge to succumb again to his embrace. It was the most difficult thing she’d ever done. He felt like heaven. But it was a heaven not meant for her.

“I don’t desire you,” she insisted. The lie came hard to her lips, and she couldn’t meet his accusing stare. “And I don’t fear you. It’s only that you…you refuse to keep to your place.”

Much of the ardor left his eyes. He quirked an annoyed brow at her. “My…
place
?”

“You’re a…a peasant,” she explained shakily. “I am of noble blood. You have nothing to offer me.”

“Nothing to…” The beggar released her hands. He looked truly incensed now. “What about love? What about loyalty?”

“Love is for fools.” Her father had told her so a thousand times. Still, her voice cracked as she repeated the words and her eyes filled with tears. “I deserve far better than to live…like this.” She sniffed, indicating the stable. “You should seek out one of your own—a milkmaid or…or a serving girl—to marry.”

Her eyes only flitted over his face, but in that brief moment she glimpsed his enormous pain. She’d hurt him, far worse than she’d hurt anyone before. Guilt crushed her. And yet there was nothing else she could do. If she let the beggar believe they had a destiny together, she’d only prolong his agony, and hers. It was better this way, even though her heart cried out bitterly in protest, better to end it now.

“I want no part of you,” she lied.

The beggar’s eyes narrowed to slits, and smoldering anger quickly replaced the pain. “Oh, there’s a part of me you do want, my lady,” he said nastily, “and that part makes no distinction between noblewoman and commoner.” He snorted. “Besides, what made you think I intended marriage? You must have let your imagination get the best of you.”

A damning flush burned her cheeks. They were cruel words, but she should have foreseen them. She should have known by the beggar’s glib tongue that he was the type of man to use a woman for his own pleasure and then abandon her. He was a self-serving pauper, just like all of his ilk were, just like her own mother.

She blinked back hot tears and let familiar memories bring her solace.

She’d heard the story a thousand times—how young Aucassin de Montfort had broken his own betrothal by marrying, for love, a peasant girl, how his family never forgave him, how they disowned him in the end. All of it her father bore with the grace of a penitent priest. But what transpired afterward he could never speak of without bitterness in his voice and a flat hatred in his eyes awful to behold.

The peasant wench, his beloved Anne, the joy of his existence, had married him for his wealth and title. Once those were stripped from him, she had no further use of the man she’d purported to love. She abandoned him and left the fruit of their brief union, the newborn Linet, on his doorstep.

Gradually Lord Aucassin recovered. He took up a trade to support himself and his child. Later he learned from Anne’s sister that his wife found a richer, less scrupulous nobleman to live with, one who eventually killed her with the pox.

And each time her father told the story, he made Linet promise the same thing, a promise that had once seemed ridiculous to her, but no more. He made Linet vow that she’d never fall in love with a commoner.

She steeled her trembling jaw and stared at a spot over the beggar’s shoulder, letting dignity fuel her words. “Tomorrow we’ll part ways.”

“So eager to leave me?”

She drew herself up proudly. “Eager to be with my own people.”

Duncan spat. He didn’t know whether to be disgusted or amused. “Your own people?”

“Aye. Noble people, honorable people, people who…who buy bread with coin, not kisses.”

Duncan nodded, biting back his anger. He studied her—the determined thrust of her chin, the sheen of her eyes, the rose lips that pressed together with stubborn pride—and he couldn’t dispel the pall of despondency that came over him. It seemed that was all women cared about—wealth and lineage. He’d dared to hope Linet de Montfort was different.

When he spoke at last, it was with calm defeat. “Does it mean so much to you then?”

“It’s everything,” she whispered.

Duncan studied her a long while. Finally he nodded and lowered his gaze in surrender. A single white feather floated down from the loft between them as if to signal a truce. Then Linet gathered her skirts about her and retreated quietly to bed down in the straw.

Duncan felt the day’s long journey now. He was sad and tired, like a soundly vanquished warrior. The dim silence of night stole over the stable. The first tentative chirps of crickets intruded upon the dark. The beasts calmed and nestled down to sleep. But Duncan lay awake for a long time, staring at the moonlit black rafters in deep contemplation.

He’d meant to tell her tonight, to reveal his name and his title. He’d planned to assure her that his intentions were honorable, that she’d be safe with him until he could convey her to the de Montfort castle.

He’d never meant to fall so completely in love with her. And he still didn’t know how it had happened. After all, she’d been but an obligation he’d taken upon himself. If he felt a certain compassion for her, it was surely no more than what he always felt for those he took under his wing. That explained the softening he experienced when he looked into her sweet face. It was mere compassion.

And yet…she’d responded to him, and he to her, as if they were forged upon the same anvil. When he held her in his arms, she was fire to his tinder and wine for his thirst. She embodied much of what he found noble in a lady and all that he found honest in a maidservant. No woman had ever had such a profound effect on him—amazing him, arousing him, challenging him at every turn, captivating him with her curious blend of intellect and innocence.

Damn his eyes, he’d fallen in love with her.

But that was before she’d revealed her true colors. She’d exposed a fatal flaw, one that made him grind his teeth in frustration. Linet de Montfort had an appalling prejudice against commoners.

He turned onto his side, bunching the straw beneath his head for a pillow, and closed his eyes. How could he possibly feel affection for a woman who based every interaction of her life upon the very thing he fought most fervently against? No one could be more wrong for him. He couldn’t love her.

All he had to do was convince his heart of it.

Until then, he’d keep her at arm’s length. He still intended to protect her until she was safely behind de Montfort walls. But then he’d disappear. She’d never know the beggar who had saved her life was in fact a nobleman of the highest order.

It had been years since Duncan had milked a cow, but it was something one never forgot. He perched on the three-legged stool, resting his forehead against the beast’s warm, sweet-smelling flank, and massaged her udders to start the flow of milk. Once begun, the rhythmic movement was soothing. The sounds of the milk spraying into the pail, the munching of fodder, and the occasional soft stamp of the cow’s hind hoof comforted him after a restless night. His eyelids began to grow so heavy that he could scarcely keep them open.

Until he heard noise from outside. Then his senses came alert. He hopped up from the stool to press his eye to the crack of the stable door. By then it was too late. Two horsemen had dismounted and were already coming his way. The crofter had arisen as well, chattering away angrily at the men to be off.

By the first footstep, Duncan recognized the pair—Tomas and Clave, reivers from the
Corona Negra
. By their second footfall, his mind had raced through a series of possibilities for escape. By the third, he bolted back from the door, dove for the still slumbering Linet, rolled with her into the shadows of the stable, and laid hands upon a pitchfork leaning against the wall.

The plan would have worked flawlessly had Linet been some straw-stuffed quintain’s dummy. But as soon as she felt the weight of Duncan’s body pressing her into the hay and then tumbling her roughly across the stable, she let loose a spate of indignant protests loud enough to alert the next village.

“Unhand me, you…you cad!” she cried. “How dare you! What do you think—”

Too late, Duncan clapped a free hand over her mouth.

Linet bit down hard as the stable door flew open with a vengeance that rattled the rafters. Her victim howled with pain, shaking his injured hand free.

In the doorway, dust scattered in a maelstrom around two of El Gallo’s reivers. They stood in a pool of morning light, their swords at the ready. Linet spit the straw from her mouth, rapidly blinking her eyes against the bright rays in the fervent hope that this was just another dream. But the reivers didn’t disappear. They were as substantial as the hard ground beneath her.

How two of El Gallo’s men had managed to track them across the countryside to this stable she didn’t know. She only knew that the reiver captain must want revenge very badly to send his men so far afield.

“So what do we have here, eh?” the smaller, ferret-like man chortled. “A fine pair of chickens, no, Tomas?”

Tomas, lumbering forward like a big bear, only grunted, apparently disliking the fact that the beggar had armed himself with a pitchfork.

“One of them looks to be a
laying
hen, no?” the ferret said with a gap-toothed smirk, winking at her.

The crofter plunged in through the door just then, loudly protesting the reivers’ intrusion. But before he could speak his full piece, the bearish reiver cuffed him soundly alongside the head, knocking the poor man senseless to the ground.

“Come on out now, chickens,” the ferret crooned. “El Gallo is calling you.”

Linet’s head still reeled from the shock of her rude awakening. A glance toward the beggar confirmed that he, at least, possessed all his senses. His face seemed carved of granite, his eyes stone cold. She could feel the tension in him, as keen as lightning about to strike.

He murmured so softly that she could barely hear him. “Go above when I rush forward, into the loft.”

She frowned. She had no intention of becoming cornered in the loft when the beggar fell to the two reivers. “Nay,” she murmured back.