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Authors: The Mistress of Rosecliffe

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The measured clap of approval startled her. “Nicely done,” Reevius said, stepping out from the shadows of an ancient twisted willow.
Isolde gaped at him, speechless. He was the last man she’d expected to see, though in truth he was also the one she
most
wanted to see. But faced with his unexpected nearness, her wits seemed to freeze.
Her eyes, however, did not. As he leaped down from a small boulder, they ran avidly over him. He looked different from last night, for despite the cold sea winds, he wore only a thin chainse over his braies. It was damp from the sea spray and so clung to him, outlining the wonderful breadth of his
chest and arms. His hair was wet and slicked back from his face, and she realized that he was younger than she’d thought. Only a few years older than she. His eyes were more visible with his hair back, and even darker than she’d imagined.
He would be handsome beneath that beard, she decided, though in a harsh sort of way. Bold nose. Sharp cheekbones. Lean cheeks and a determined jaw. But his lips were full and well formed, she saw, and that thought sent color burning into her cheeks.
She sternly willed herself to be sensible. Her hands tightened around the gittern. “You startled me. I … I hope you do not mind that I brought your gittern down here. I did not let the water touch it.”
He nodded, then he glanced up toward the castle. “You should not be here alone. No woman should.”
“I am quite safe.”
“Are you?” His midnight gaze fell back to her face.
Isolde swallowed hard and her skin prickled with excruciating awareness. It was not alarm, though perhaps it should have been, for there was something in his words, and something in his eyes.
“I am safe here,” she repeated. “The guards are near and there are fishermen also.”
“They beached their boat some time ago and are already up the cliff.”
“They are?” She craned to see. “I must have been too immersed in the music to notice,” she confessed, looking back at him.
For some reason that made him smile, a true and heartfelt smile not meant for an audience, but solely for her. Isolde’s stomach did a flip-flop. Her heart lurched in her chest. Were she standing, she knew her knees would have buckled. As it was she found it hard to catch her breath. No wonder he was stingy with his smile. Were he to loose it indiscriminately, no woman would ever be safe again.
“When I play,” he said, moving nearer, “time often fades away. There is something soothing in music.”
He stopped before her, looking down as she gazed up the rangy length of him. What a truly fine specimen of a man he was, she thought. More manly than any of her father’s knights.
For though he was as powerfully built as any of them, he wielded not a sword, but his music.
And that lethal smile.
This was the sort of man who could capture her heart, she realized with sudden clarity. That’s why none of the men her father suggested had ever appealed to her. She wanted a passionate, yet gentle soul, not a coarse warrior. She wanted a sensitive poet, a minstrel, not a knight.
She wanted Reevius.
Aghast at such inappropriate thoughts, she thrust the gittern at him. “Would you play? Please?” she asked with lips suddenly gone dry. She licked them, then looked away from his keen stare. He could not possibly guess what she was thinking. Could he?
Rhys stared down at the woman who held his gittern up to him, and had to remind himself forcefully who she was. Isolde FitzHugh. Daughter to the hated Lord of Rosecliffe. Niece of the man who’d killed his father. She was his enemy, one he could use in his revenge upon her family. She was the leverage that would gain him what he’d dreamed of his entire life.
But at the moment, with the lowering sun glinting sparks off her rich hair, and her clear gray eyes gazing up at him, it was easy to forget those things. Her skin looked so soft and pale, save for the wash of color across her cheeks. Like pearls by firelight. And her mouth … When her tongue had swept across her full lower lip, he’d felt the unseemly rise of desire.
But he could not desire her. He would not allow himself to.
He took the gittern from her hand and she averted her eyes. Of course she did, he scoffed. She’d led such a protected life. Few men would have dared to stare so boldly at her. Nor should he, for it might alarm her and ruin the opportunity he’d been handed.
But it was impossible for him to look away from her. Her lashes were long and thick, and cast crescent shadows upon her cheeks. Her fingers were slender and long. Her waist delicate. Her breasts full.
“
Taran!
” he swore beneath his breath.
Her eyes widened in alarm. “Have I damaged it?”
“No. The instrument is fine.”
“But you swore—” She broke off.
He swore again, but silently this time. He must remember that she spoke Welsh. She might be an English lord’s daughter, and she appeared the epitome of English beauty, comparable to any of the ladies he’d known in the past ten years. But she carried Welsh blood in her veins. She knew the language and the customs, and if he were careless, she would guess his secret before he could spring his attack.
Clenching his jaw, he took a respectful step back from her. “My pardon for such thoughtlessness. You will want to return to the castle.”
She rose to her feet and looked up the sheer cliff to the wall where a pennant flapped in the strong sea breeze. The breeze played in the loose curls around her face, and molded her full skirts against her hips and legs. She was taller than her mother, he noticed. The top of her head came even with his chin, and there was a dried petal caught in a curl near her brow.
He started to reach for it, then stopped. What was he doing?
When she did not flinch away from him, however, he could not resist. He caught the bit of pink between his finger and thumb, then slowly slid the dried blossom free.
He saw her swallow. He saw curiosity and fear and anticipation in the endless depths of her eyes, and again desire reared its demanding head. He wanted her. That she was a FitzHugh bore no weight. He wanted her.
“Will you be going now?” he murmured, at the same time demanding with his eyes that she stay.
“I … I thought … I thought we might have another lesson.” She touched the gittern he held. “And I can show you what I have already learned.”
Elation surged through Rhys. “As you wish.” He glanced up at the wall again. No guard had yet looked down to see them together. He could as easily drown her or kidnap her—or ravish her—as give her musical instruction. Were those guards fools to have so little concern for her safety?
But that was good, he reminded himself. That was to his advantage, and he meant to make use of it.
“Let us sit,” he said, lowering himself to the protection of the boulder. She sat, too, close enough to touch. But he did
not touch her. Their legs extended side by side in the sand. Her feet were bare; her toes pink and soft.
He had to put the gittern across his lap to disguise the proof of his lust.
He cleared his throat. “You’ve put your first lesson to good use. Now I’ll show you more, a chord to use in tandem with those others.”
“My fingertips are sore,” she admitted.
“Let me see.”
She extended her hand palm up. He cupped it in his. It was the wrong thing to do.
Or perhaps it was the right thing. For though her touch lit a torch inside him and made him want to kiss her reddened fingertips and run his tongue in long, leisurely circles around her palm, it also gave him a brutal reminder of the vast chasm between them. Her hand was small and delicate and soft, the hand of the pampered daughter of a people who sought to rule his land. By contrast, his hand was big and hard, callused and coarsened by years of fighting.
He could crush her hand in his. He could crush her. He could force her to submit to him, and one day he would.
But there was no advantage in rushing things, he told himself. Indeed, there was pleasure to be had in discovering how far he could entice her. Just how good and obedient was this daughter FitzHugh had raised?
He ran one finger lightly over her sore fingertips. “Perhaps we should wait until tomorrow for the next lesson,” he said.
“Oh, no. I can manage,” Isolde said.
Across the short space that separated them he stared at her and raised her hand between them. “Are you certain?”
Had she looked away, he could have controlled himself better. Had she lowered her eyes and drawn her hand free of his, he would have picked up the gittern and begun the lesson she wanted. But she did not look away, nor seek to free her delicate hand from his.
And though she did not speak, he heard the request she made. There was a different lesson she wished to learn, on another subject entirely.
But he could teach her that lesson also, and very well. So, though it was madness, though it was not what he’d intended,
at least not so soon, Rhys raised her hand to his lips. Then staring deep into her clear-water eyes, he pressed a kiss to her palm. Not a courtier’s kiss. Not a suitor’s kiss. But a lover’s kiss, meant to arouse.
Meant to seduce.
AT THE TOUCH OF REEVIUS’S LIPS TO THE CENTER OF HER hand, Isolde thought she would faint. Her stomach lurched, curling into a knot, and every bit of her flesh tightened in response. Her skin prickled. Her insides melted, and her heretofore dormant nipples pebbled into taut nubs.
Her entire body seemed to strain toward him. And when his tongue moved in a small wet circle against her sensitive palm, she gasped, for every one of those sensations trebled.
What was happening to her? What was he doing?
Then he moved his clever mouth to her tender fingertips, and Isolde let out a little moan. He kissed each digit at the very end, one by one, a form of caress completely beyond her ken.
Lovers kissed, and they lay together, much as animals did, in order to procreate. That much she understood. But this … this unimaginable excitement … This fire in her belly caused merely by his lips upon her hand …
“Reevius.” She breathed his name and he lifted his head.
“What would you have of me, lady. Music? Or something more?”
Isolde could hardly think, her mind was so completely muddled. He still held her hand. He still stared at her with eyes so dark she felt they might swallow her up. The very idea sent a new shiver of longing through her. What indeed did she want from him? Music lessons, or something more?
Both, she admitted to herself in a moment of total honesty. But she could not have both, not here. Not now.
Not ever, the voice of logic belatedly piped in.
She curled her hand into a fist, then slid it free of his strong, heated grasp, and looked away.
“I want …” She swallowed hard. “I want only a music lesson. That is all.” She tilted her head and looked sidelong at him. She ought to rebuke him for the impertinence he had just displayed. But she could not. She swallowed again. “Perhaps we should return to the castle after all.”
“As you wish.” He rose easily to his feet then extended his hand.
Beset alternately by disappointment that he’d so swiftly agreed, relief that he would not press the issue with her, and a perverse longing for the same sort of kiss on her mouth that he’d given to her palm, Isolde stared up at him. Did she dare take his hand again?
She could not resist. She grasped his callused hand and felt at once the power he held in check. It thrilled her and alarmed her and convinced her more than ever that there was some connection between them, something meant to be. He lifted her to her feet as if her weight were nothing, but did not immediately release his grip. Instead he tugged her nearer, his eyes voracious. Intense.
“I want to kiss more than your hand, Isolde. Should you desire that also, you have but to ask it of me.”
Then, on that utterly devastating note, he let her go.
Isolde stumbled back, reeling. Every step of the way—around the boulder, across the beach, up the steep stone steps, with him just behind her, she reeled from the impact of those few bold words. She slipped and he steadied her—no more than any gentleman would do. His hand caught her arm and curved around her elbow, courteous and impersonal. Yet she burned from the contact.
By the time they gained the narrow ledge at the base of the castle wall, her legs were putty, her face was flushed, and her conflicting emotions had her utterly confused. She was not one prone to such emotional upheavals, yet she seemed unable to pull herself together.
“Are you a’right, milady?” one of the guards called down, frowning when he spied her alone with Reevius.
“Yes. Yes,” she repeated in a more carrying tone. The
guards would report this to Osborn, she realized. If she did not wish Reevius cast out of the castle, she must allay their suspicions.
She took the gittern from Reevius and raised it high for the guards to see. “I shall soon serenade the hall myself,” she called up to them. Then, not able to meet Reevius’s unsettling stare, she thrust the instrument at him, turned and fled through the narrow postern passageway to the safety of the bailey and the myriad people of Rosecliffe.
As the afternoon progressed Isolde made certain not to find time to continue her music lessons. She did not understand what had passed between her and Reevius on the beach and feared to put herself in the path of temptation too soon.
Temptation. As she made her late afternoon rounds of the weaving sheds, the dye vats, and the fresco painting, trying in vain to put Reevius and his wondrous kisses out of her head, she came to the unwelcome conclusion that what she’d experienced with him was not some special connection, but rather, temptation.
And also, the deadly sin of lust.
He’d tempted her. But she had been the one to feel lust—and what a powerful emotion she’d discovered it to be.
Could she keep it under control when next she saw him? She wasn’t entirely certain. Did she want to keep it under control? In truth, no.
She groaned at her perversity, and abruptly changed direction. What did it matter the level of the honey stores if her soul were in mortal danger? Better to sit in the chapel and ponder Father Clemson’s recent sermon on lust and fornication, the sermon she’d paid scant notice to.
So she knelt in the unlit chapel, empty now of workmen, and considered the dangers that beset her eternal soul. She clasped her hands and bowed her head and screwed her face into a frown of concentration as she prayed.
Let me not be tempted to sin with this man. Please, Lord, send me a sign. Send me the right man, the one I am to wed and make my life with. I know it cannot be him, for my father would never allow it. But please, Lord, send the right man soon, and save me from this fire in my belly.
She heard the chapel door open, but did not look up from
her prayers. No doubt it was Father Clemson. Should she confess her sins to him? Should she ask his guidance?
Then he stopped just behind her, and a jolt of sudden awareness quivered up her spine. It was not the good priest—
“Do you pray for your immortal soul?” Reevius asked in a husky whisper.
She leaped to her feet, bumping into him in her haste.
“Steady.” He caught her by the arm but she jerked away and stared fearfully at him. Was this the sign God had sent her? Was it?
Was Reevius the man God sent to her? He’d come before her prayer was scarcely done. Or was this only a test of her moral fortitude? She stared at him, afraid to be wrong, unsure of how to respond.
“Why are you here?” She gestured with one hand. “Have you followed me?”
He spread his arms wide in a shrug. He’d donned a tunic over his chainse, but it could not disguise his broad shoulders and heavily muscled arms. “I came to the chapel to pray. Is that so surprising?” He paused. “Would you prefer I leave?”
“No.” Isolde wrapped her arms around herself and sternly ordered herself to become calm. “No. You must stay, of course. Stay and pray as you intended.”
“I should not have intruded on your privacy.”
“No. That is nothing.” From behind him stray beams of late afternoon light played in his hair, striking glints of gold against the thick black of it. Almost like a halo, she thought.
Her mind spun with indecision. He’d come here to pray. It must be a sign. Could it be that he was not just a temptation, but instead the man God meant for her to find? Could that have been God’s purpose when her father made her remain behind?
She took a deep breath, weighing all the evidence. God was said to move in mysterious ways. Now, for whatever reason, it seemed he’d sent a minstrel to her, not a man of war.
A minstrel.
A smile slowly lit up her face, and a strange sort of calm settled over her. Her father would be furious, she realized. He wanted a well-connected young lord for a son-in-law. A
knight, like himself. But eventually he would come around. He would have to.
Still smiling, she extended a hand to Reevius. “Let us pray together,” she said, as happiness welled up inside her. “Let us pray together, for we are here in the chapel together. Come.”
Rhys took Isolde’s hand and he knelt beside her. It appeared he’d guessed rightly, that she’d slipped into the chapel to ponder what had occurred between them on the beach. If her smile and sudden calm were any indication, it seemed she might have come to some sort of conclusion, one that now welcomed his presence.
So he knelt beside her and considered his next move.
But it was hard to think. He was acutely aware of her, head bent, hands clasped in earnest prayer. Had he ever prayed so? Had he ever possessed such a faith?
He clenched his jaw in annoyance. Piety was easy for those with full bellies and time on their hands. It was easy for those who’d never faced the cruelties of life without the protection of family and stout stone walls.
No, he’d never prayed so, and he never would. But he would kneel beside this woman while she prayed, and lull her into complacency while he considered what next to do.
He forced himself to concentrate, to think ahead. He’d planned this campaign carefully, recruiting other discontented Welshmen to his cause. Glyn had assembled men in Afon Bryn, men from the Welsh strongholds in Powys. Even Dafydd, his old friend from ten years ago, had pledged himself and two others to taking Rosecliffe from the English. They were just waiting for Rhys to spring his trap. He would disable the guards on the north wall first, and bring his Welsh countrymen in through the postern gate. Then they would take the other guards and put them in the donjon—the donjon where he’d once resided.
And what of Isolde FitzHugh?
Uncomfortable with that thought, he shifted his weight from one knee to the other. By damn, but the floor was hard and cold. How long did she intend to pray?
Beside him she shifted and he immediately stilled. What was he to do about her? The answer was clear. He would
seduce the pious wench. There was no reason not to and one huge reason why he should: he wanted her.
She’d heated his blood with her beauty, her innocence, and her unexpected passion. It was plain that she was ready for a man, and he was sore overdue the pleasures of a woman. She would do as well as any other.
Besides, what better way to gloat over the FitzHughs than to ruin their precious firstborn?
 
As she oversaw preparations for the evening meal Isolde kept her distance from Reevius. At the same time, however, she watched him constantly. She tried to keep her fascination with him to herself. But he would look up and catch her gaze upon him, and after a while she knew it was hopeless. He had to know what she was thinking, and she had a fair inkling herself of what he was thinking, too. That he might find her even half so appealing as she found him made her stomach giddy and her head spin!
An empty metal platter slipped from her hand, and she scurried to retrieve it. She glanced guiltily around. Did anyone else suspect the momentous change that had occurred to her today?
Odo was frowning, gesticulating with both hands as he harangued the hapless pantler. Osborn came into the hall with one of his knights, the two of them engrossed in conversation.
She let loose a sigh, thankful for that modicum of privacy, only to be startled by a tug on her sleeve.
“The fruits of prayer are many, and varied,” an old familiar voice stated.
“Newlin!” Isolde gasped and again dropped the platter. “My goodness, but you frightened me. When did you arrive? Why was I not informed you were here?”
The ancient little bard looked up at her with his one good eye and his sweet, twisted smile. “I believe Odo did inform you. Do you not recall?”
“He did? Oh, yes. He did,” Isolde admitted, feeling the heat of embarrassment creep into her cheeks. She turned away from Newlin’s discerning gaze. “I have been forgetful of late. There are so many more details for me to attend while my parents are not in residence.”
The old bard nodded. “Too many things on your mind, no doubt. I am told there is fine entertainment to be had after the evening meal.”
“Yes. Minstrels.” The color in her cheeks grew deeper. “They also perform acrobatics.”
“And give music lessons. The gittern?”
He knew! Isolde gnawed one side of her bottom lip. “Yes,” she slowly admitted. Had someone told him or did he, in the inexplicable way he had, simply know?
He smiled up at her. “Methinks these minstrels have a talent far beyond what we have yet to see.” He started toward the low bench he favored, and Isolde watched the slow dip and sway of his peculiar gait. What did he mean by that? She hurried after him.
“To what sort of talent do you refer?” she asked.
“You would know that better than I, child, for I have yet to lay eyes upon these minstrels.”
“Well …” Isolde hesitated. As usual, Newlin expected her to be completely honest with him. He would not share any portion of his mysterious knowledge with her if he thought she was being in the least deceptive. “He has a talent for … for attracting women,” she said, embarrassed to discuss such a thing with the bard of Rosecliffe.

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