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Authors: Rexanne Becnel

Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Historical, #General, #Medieval

The Maiden Bride (29 page)

BOOK: The Maiden Bride
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Only then did she realize the danger she was in.
He bolted the door. For a moment he just stood there, facing the door. Breathing hard. Then he turned and without looking at her, he began to undress. Weapons he set carefully aside. His boots he placed beside a low table. His tunic and chainse, then stockings and braies, he laid across the table.
He was deliberate in every movement he made, as if she were not there, and he prepared for bed in the normal fashion. But she was there and he knew it, and Linnea turned cold inside.
She circled around him then backed up to the door, though she knew escape was not possible. He clearly knew it too, for though he straightened to face her, he did not advance on her. Instead he fixed her with his wintry gaze.
“Choose, Linnea. Will you warm Henry’s bed tonight or mine?” Like a double-edged blade, sunk to the hilt in her chest, those harsh, unfeeling words cut her. Linnea sucked in a hard breath. This was her punishment then—or the beginning of it. To choose Axton over Henry Plantagenet was not so hard. But to have him take her without any feeling whatsoever—it would be worse even than in his mother’s chamber. She did not think she could bear it.
He looked at her, a long, unendurable stare that stripped away all the layers of what they’d each done and why they’d done it. He faced her, naked, virile—a man who wanted no words or excuses from her, only the use of her body.
Linnea began to tremble.
“Take off your clothes.”
She must have shaken her head, or perhaps it was only her lack of response that revealed her opposition.
“Take them off, then come here and work your wiles on me.”
“Axton, no …”
“You played the whore when I did not recognize the role. The only difference now is that I know you for who you are. Take off your clothes,” he demanded in a deadly tone.
She pressed back into the door, but there was no relief there, only rough wood and the nubby protuberance of bolts and hinges keeping her inside with him. She tore her eyes from his unflinching gaze. But scanning the room brought no promise of escape. Simple furnishings and unadorned stone walls. And on a peg on the far wall hung the chain.
Her eyes froze on it. Its gold links and red stones winked in the erratic firelight. It was the sight of that chain that finally defeated her.
So it was come to this. She would be raped by the man she loved. The man who might have grown to love her had she not forced him to hate her.
She turned her face back to him, then slowly pushed off from the door.
First she removed her veil and the circlet that held it in place. Her hair came undone from its simple looping with little effort. She unlaced her sleeves, then the waist slits of her gown. But she kept her eyes on him and he kept his on her.
She removed the gown though her fingers shook with every task. She stepped out of her low-heeled shoes then stood before him, hesitant. Only her kirtle covered her and it was so thin as to be nearly transparent.
When Axton only stared at her, however, she knew it too must go. She slid it off her shoulders then freed her arms and pushed it past her hips until it fell to the floor.
He had not moved as she’d disrobed. He’d not even watched really, for his smoldering gaze had remained locked with hers. But now, as he waited for her to come to him, she saw one change in him. He was aroused. Fully and completely aroused.
That part of him she’d once feared, then grown to love, she now feared again.
She glanced away, toward the weapons he’d so casually discarded. Could she move fast enough to grab one of them? Could she then fight him off? She feared not.
Once before she’d tried to fight him when he’d begun to take her in anger. She’d fought back. Then … then somehow everything had turned around. A spark of sudden hope flared as she recalled what had happened. He’d pulled her on top of him and let her control everything.
Perhaps if she took charge … Perhaps if she made love to him, he would be unable to make it into something hateful and ugly.
Linnea took a steadying breath. When his eyes moved to her breasts and her bared, puckered nipples, she felt both chagrin and another tiny shiver of hope. She took another breath.
“Lie on the bed,” she ordered, forcing herself to stare straight at him. When he raised his gaze back to her face, his eyes narrowed.
“Lie on the bed,” she repeated, before he could reply. “’Tis what you want, is it not? For me to give you pleasure. For me to play the part you have assigned me,” she added bitterly.
“’Tis a part you willingly embraced,” he countered. But she saw his manhood stiffen further.
“Well, then. Let me perform my part. Lie on the bed.”
This time he complied. He lay on his back on the bearskin, his strong body framed by the black fur. He was like the bear, she fancied. Dangerous to approach. Deadly to touch. Yet she was too ensnared by his fearful beauty to be careful.
She came to the bed and for a moment she simply stared down at him. He was all muscle and smooth skin, marred occasionally by the scars of his profession. But that only magnified his appeal. He was like a battle-scarred bear that had fought many times to protect its territory. Even the hair on his legs and chest and loins was the black of the bear.
A frisson of erotic heat shivered its way up from her belly. If only he loved her …
His viselike grip trapped her wrist, then pulled her hand rudely to his groin. She felt the hard heat of him, the angry demand, and she almost faltered. He hated her. She did not think she could bear to make love to him when he despised her so.
He moved her hand up and down on him and she had to steel herself not to snatch it away. When she glanced wildly at his face, however, her near panic vanished. There was such torture in his eyes. His face was impassive, but his eyes …
Without pausing to think, Linnea bent down and kissed him fully on the mouth. She felt him stiffen; he had not expected that. But that only prodded her on. She kissed him again, so fervently that she feared he would sense all her emotions. All her love.
Of all the intimacies they’d shared, kissing seemed somehow the most personal. Other than their wedding kiss, he’d not kissed her until that day in the woods alongside the river. She’d taken it, if not a declaration of love, then a declaration of caring. And now, she was declaring the depths of her caring to him—of her love, if he was listening.
She heard a growl, as if he objected. But when she ran the tip of her tongue along the seam of his lips, he parted them. And when she delved deeper, and he met her tongue with his own, she felt the bittersweet pang of her triumph.
She kissed him and he kissed her back, and suddenly he tumbled her onto the bed. Onto him.
It was a frantic coupling, hasty and intense, marked as fiercely by the melding of their mouths and tongues as by the joining of their bodies. She rode him and possessed him, and in some subtle way, she knew that he was aware of it. He’d thought to possess her, but she possessed him.
When it was over—when he grabbed her and pumped all he had into her, and she clenched and seemed to die upon him—they lay in one sweaty heap, a sprawl of trembling limbs and tangled hair and exhausted bodies.
Only then did Linnea end their kiss and turn her face into the strong curve of his neck.
They gasped for breath in unison. One of his hands clasped her bottom. The other spread across the small of her back. As they calmed, he began to move it, sliding it up her spine, letting his fingertips trace the rhythmic bumps of her spine.
Linnea would happily have died just then, sated by their lovemaking, held yet in the warm embrace of the man she loved.
But then his light stroking stopped and Linnea felt the change in him. It was as if he’d just surfaced from a fog and realized where he was. And with whom. A north wind blowing icy across their overheated bodies could not have chilled her so swiftly as did the renewed tension that filled his body.
She rolled off him at once, but he did not let her escape. Instead he caught her hair in his fist and forced her to face him. What she saw in his eyes tore her heart to shreds.
“What is it you have, that you can so easily bewitch me? What sorcerer’s spell? What devil’s evil?” His darkened gaze bored into hers. “Is it the devil who has taught you these tricks? Is it he who has given you this dark magic, this ability to seduce a man’s body and his soul?”
With his free hand he grabbed her leg and roughly thumbed her birthmark. “Is this his mark? Has he sent you here to torment me with a living hell?”
“And what of you?” she cried out in despair. “Are you no less cruel to me?”
But he was too angry to listen. With a curse he drew back from her. “Begone from here, witch! Get out of my sight!” That there was a bleakness in his eyes as he said it was no salve to Linnea’s pain.
Burying any show of emotion, she snatched up her kirtle and gown. “Now that you are sated, shall I go to Henry? ’Tis said the sign of a good lord is ever to please his liege. To share your whore with him is only good manners.” She had struggled into her clothes. Now she faced him with blazing eyes. “But tell me this, my
lord.
Shall I clean away the leavings of our joining before I go to him—or does he prefer a woman wet from the man before him?”
Then without allowing him the chance to answer, she fled.
 
S
he did not warm Henry’s bed. That much Axton knew, for when he would have stormed half-garbed into Henry’s chamber, Reynold had barred the way. “She is not there,” he’d said, and gestured toward the stair with his head.
Where she’d gone—where else she might have hidden herself for the night—he did not know. Nor did he care, he told himself. He would not share her with any man, most of all Henry. Beyond that, however, he did not care what she did with herself.
He repeated that to himself in myriad versions through the endless hours of the night. He did not care if she wept. He did not care if she was sorry for deceiving him. He did not care if she slept huddled in some cold corner or within her sister’s cowardly embrace. He only cared that she be available to him whenever he desired her.
Only that would not be as easy as it had been when he’d thought her his wife.
Christ, but he wished he could kill this insane desire he had for her!
But it was more than desire, and he knew it. Were it only desire, another woman would suffice. But he had no taste for other women, not her sister nor the wenches Peter had sent to him. He wanted only Linnea, the woman who was the source of all his pain and yet, was the only one he would turn to for comfort.
God save him from such perversity!
But even God could not help him in this, and as the night progressed and he fell at last into a fitful slumber, it was to dream of battle and slaughter, and the enticing smile of Linnea waiting for him. It was not Beatrix. He could see well enough the difference twixt the two. No, it was Linnea who waited for him.
And Linnea who always disappeared before he could reach her.
He awoke in a foul mood. Fitting for battle, he acknowledged as he made his brief ablutions. Peter appeared to help him dress, then together they proceeded to the chapel to pray. By then the entire castle was roused and in motion, and everywhere he went, everyone’s eyes followed.
They knew what this day held, though they could not predict the outcome. From lowliest kitchen drudge to knights from three different entourages, they all anticipated the coming confrontation with morbid fascination. More lives than his own hung in the balance, but Axton knew better than to dwell on that. His focus must be on Eustace de Montfort, on the man’s strengths, but most especially, his weaknesses. And the foremost of his weaknesses was his arrogance.
Axton had seen Eustace fight, both on the battlefield and in tournament play. He had a strong arm and considerable endurance. But once shaken, he quickly unraveled. Unnerve the man, and he would swiftly flounder.
It was Axton’s intent to goad him, taunt him, and then make swift work of him. But that simple plan was sorely tested over the next several hours.
Henry arose late. He bathed leisurely. By the time he came downstairs to break his fast, the kitchen did already prepare the midday repast.
“He does but prolong the sport,” Peter groused when Henry settled in the lord’s chair.
“His
sport.”
But Axton only shrugged. Henry was not his enemy this day, no matter what torment he presented. No, it was Eustace whom Axton awaited. He could put up with Henry so long as he ultimately confronted Eustace.
When Henry caught his eye, Axton made his way directly to him. “Perhaps it is only that you are newly settled here,” the young duke began. “But you have much to learn of hosting a monarch. My bed was cold.” He smiled, showing his even teeth. “And lonely.”
Although Axton heard the chastisement in Henry’s tone and knew the man did yet lust over Linnea, he refused to be baited. “Perhaps you should send for Eleanor. No doubt she pines for your presence as you do for hers.”
Henry’s grin only broadened. “To pine for one woman when so many others are available—” He shrugged, then he looked around. “But where are the other participants in today’s little drama? Never tell me that Eustace has absconded in the night.”
Axton shifted and rested his hand on the hilt of his sword. “I would not allow him to escape me so easily.”
Henry’s eyes glinted in anticipation. “Good. That is good. I trust today’s confrontation will be entertaining—and that no one will die,” he added.
This time Axton could not restrain his feelings. “You cannot set us like dogs upon one another and not expect to see blood flow!”
“Oh, but I can.” Then his easy smile faded and he leaned forward. “No one will die. I need all my nobles. Your reward should be adequate—the beauteous Beatrix de Valcourt and all this,” he added with a sweep of his hand to indicate the castle and demesne beyond. “By the by, where is she—and her equally beauteous sister?”
 
Linnea dressed with haste and not an iota of care for how she looked. Beatrix delayed, finding every excuse to reject this gown or that one. She wanted different slippers, a new veil, and her other kirtle. Even the Lady Harriet, who’d been unusually patient, could take no more.
“Be done with it!” the old woman ordered, stamping her stick upon the floor. “To delay changes nothing. Even your sister realizes that.”
Indeed, Linnea did. Nothing any of them did would delay or change anything of what this day might hold. Beatrix would be the reward to one of the men who did vie for her. As for the other man, the one who lost—
She turned to her grandmother. “Do they fight to the death?”
“Of course,” she snapped. “Blood must be drawn and quarter asked.”
“But if one of them begs quarter, then why …” But Linnea knew the answer before her grandmother gave it.
“Neither of them will ask quarter,” Lady Harriet said. “They are men of war, come fresh from battle these recent months. To think they will stop short of a killing blow …” She trailed off when Linnea paled. “Do you yet fear for his safety? Ah, but I forget. Even last night you did whore for him—”
Linnea cut off the vicious old woman with a stinging slap. She had not planned it; she only reacted to her grandmother’s cruel words. But as her grandmother staggered back and caught herself on the window ledge, Linnea felt not a moment of regret. She advanced on her grandmother, consumed by a cold rage.
“Every day of my life have you belittled me. And every day have I struggled to earn some crumb of your approval. But not anymore. Not anymore! What I have done has been for my sister, no one else. Most certainly not for you! I am no whore and you will not call me such ever again!”
Linnea glared down at her grandmother, daring her to oppose her. How she expected the bitter old woman to react, she did not know. To her utter surprise, however, Lady Harriet’s eyes flickered with fear. She rubbed her cheek then slowly drew herself up.
“You have performed your role … well,” she finally conceded. “I will not hold it against you,” she added more grudgingly.
Linnea stared at her grandmother, and suddenly she could not understand why she’d feared her so long. What, truly, was there to fear? That quickly she felt her anger fade, like a pennant capsizing when the wind ceases. But there was neither joy nor triumph to fill the empty space it left. To have intimidated her formidable grandmother should have been immensely satisfying. To at last have gained her approval should have brought her some level of contentment. She’d struggled for it so long. But it meant nothing to her now. It gained her naught, she finally saw.
She turned away from the wizened old crone and faced her terrified sister instead. “Come, Beatrix. You must be brave and face whatever this day holds.”
“I don’t want to marry him. He will kill me,” she whispered tearfully. “He will.”
Linnea took her sister by both arms and stared intently into her eyes. “He will not. He is angry now—but at me, not you. He is a fair man. Given time, you will discover that.”
But her words clearly carried no weight with Beatrix. “Perhaps with you he is so. But with me—” She shuddered and broke off, then wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “How I pray that Eustace defeats him!”
Linnea drew back shaking her head. “No, Axton should be lord here. His family has lived here longer than ours and—”
“Then
you
marry him!” Beatrix shouted. “You marry him. ’Tis plain enough you crave his touch!”
I would marry him, would he have me. But he does not want me, at least not for his wife
. “He … he wants you.” Linnea barely choked out the words. Then she gathered all her resources. “If Axton de la Manse defeats Eustace de Montfort, you will marry him and be a good wife to him.” She glared at Beatrix, at the sister she loved but who had never learned to face adversity. “You are a de Valcourt. Never forget it. You will meet your obligations with dignity. And you will make your husband proud to have you as his wife!”
Beatrix shrank back at Linnea’s strident words. When Linnea finished, Beatrix stared sullenly at her. “I still hope he loses,” she muttered.
“But he won’t,” Linnea vowed. Then she turned and strode from the solar.
On the other side of the door, however, her certainty faltered and her shoulders slumped. She hoped Axton won. She prayed he did. Her family had already taken enough from him. Despite the untenable situation between them, she could not hate him. Indeed, she could not stop loving him.
But what if Eustace won? What if he wounded Axton? Or killed him? Though the idea was inconceivable, still …
She would stay long enough to be sure he was not harmed. If he was wounded, she would stay to nurse him. Beyond that, however, she could not linger at Maidenstone. She could not bear to see him wed to Beatrix. She could not stay a minute in this place while he took her sister to his marriage bed. Once she was certain he was all right, she would leave.
She thrust her hand into her cloth pocket and felt for the tiny ruby. She would take it as her one memento of Axton.
Then her hand moved of its own will to her stomach. Was it the only memento she had? She could not be certain, but she prayed it was not.
 
The bailey was crammed to overflowing. Axton walked into the yard and swiftly scanned the crowd. Castle folk, villagers, his men and Eustace’s spread among the crowd. And everywhere that the soldiers of de la Manse and de Montfort appeared, so also were Henry’s men dispersed. At least the violence between him and Eustace would not ignite the entire castle to warfare. Henry was being very wise on that point.
“There will be but three passes. If no one is unhorsed, then the competition will be moved to hand-to-hand combat,” Peter said, hurrying along at Axton’s side. It was not information Axton hadn’t already heard, but his brother was nervous. He’d talked incessantly while assisting Axton with his armor, and he’d been muttering all the way out to the yard. Axton paused now and stayed his brother with one hand. He waved Reynold and Maurice on.
“I do not intend to lose, however … however in the event I do, you must not react foolishly.”
“You will not lose. Why—”
“Hear me out, Peter!” He fixed his brother with a firm look. The boy was tall, nearly a man, he realized. It would be natural for Peter to seek revenge for a fallen brother. Hadn’t he wanted revenge when his father and brothers had fallen in battle? But there were other considerations.
“There will be no quarter given this day, at least not for me, for there will be no quarter asked. I fight to win. But should I lose, then you become patriarch of our family. Take our mother back to Castell de la Manse. It will be yours anyway, and methinks she prefers it there.” He stared at the boy until Peter reluctantly nodded. Then he went on, but more lowly.
“I would make one other request of you.” He stopped and looked away, toward the pavillion that had been erected for Henry and the other important guests: his mother, the de Valcourt family.
Linnea.
He turned back to his brother. “Do not let Linnea fall into Henry’s clutches.”
“What?” Peter’s face creased in a scowl. “She is hardly
your
concern.”
“Do as I say, brother. Protect her as you would our mother. It is my last request of you.”
He watched as Peter’s face changed from anger to bewilderment, and then to a dawning comprehension. “You do love her—”
But Axton cut him off. “What she has done has been for her family, and I cannot fault her loyalty. ’Tis a rare thing …” He trailed off and looked again toward the pavillion, searching for the slender figure with the brilliantly golden hair that was Linnea, not the pallid copy that was her sister.
“To receive that sort of loyalty from anyone—brother, comrade, wife—is a rare thing indeed.”
He turned away from Peter then. “Time for it to begin. Time for it finally to end.”
 
Linnea spied Axton as soon as he entered the bailey. Had her eyes been blinded, she still would have known he was there. She could feel his very presence.
At his entrance a small cheer went up—his men and some of Maidenstone’s people. That did not surprise Linnea, for he’d been fair and even-handed with his people—something Maynard would never have been.
BOOK: The Maiden Bride
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