The Rose of Blacksword (35 page)

“I’ll protect his back, Rosalynde. I pledged him my loyalty and I always stand by my vow. ’Tis time you stand by yours.”

“Must you always come back to that!” she cried, truly frustrated now. She tried to slip from his encircling arms but he easily thwarted her.

“Your vow is where it all started between us. It will always come back to that. But if you would know more of your husband, ’tis easily enough done. Just bribe me with your kisses. If you doubt my willingness to serve your father honorably, promise me your tender caress. Tempt me with the memory of our joining.” His husky words sent a warm shiver through her. “Come to my bed, my sweet, sweet wife.”

If only she could, the wild thought careened through her head. If only it was that easy she would follow him right now, whether to a bed of straw, a pallet of hides, or a mattress of feathers and down. He would lay her back and
remove her clothes. Then he would remove his as well, and cover her trembling body with the heat and power of his own.

Rosalynde turned her face away from his seeking kiss, but her hands twisted in the sturdy fabric of his tunic. “You don’t understand,” she whispered miserably. “What you want … it can never be.”

“You’re wrong in that, my honey Rose. We may have whatever we want
if
we are willing to take the risk.”

“But the risk is your
life!
” she blurted out angrily. “Can’t you see that?”

His hand caught her chin and he turned her face up to him. She felt the rough warmth of his palm against the sensitive skin of her neck. But his eyes were hard and as dark as obsidian.

“I think, perhaps, that it is the risk to
your
life—to your way of life—that worries you most.” So saying, he bent forward to take her mouth in an angry and forceful kiss.

There was no teasing this time, no beguiling and seducing with lips and tongue. This time he did not ask nor did he coax. Instead he took what he wanted with no regard for her feelings at all.

Rosalynde felt the heat of anger and frustration in his demanding possession of her. As he twisted her hair in his hands then plundered her mouth voraciously, she recognized the desire that drove him to such a violent outburst. Within her there was an answering desire. She was thunder to his lightning, as much a cause of this storm of emotions as she was a reaction to it. She felt the rigid strength of him pressing against her; she felt the melting heat as she became pliant against him. But everything else was lost as she succumbed to the intoxicating power of his kiss.

There was no right or wrong as Rosalynde yielded to his steely embrace. Logic and the proper order of society
played no part in her reaction to him. In truth, it never had. Whether he were a black-hearted criminal as had been proclaimed, or something else as she often suspected, there was no denying him. In reckless abandon she rose to his forceful possession of her. In a dizzy rush she accepted his rough caress and in so doing found an even greater pleasure. She was crushed in his arms, drowning in the powerful emotions that erupted between them. And when his hand slid down to cup her derriere, to press her most intimately against his fierce arousal, she whimpered helplessly against his lips.

“Will you have me, my thorny Rose?” he murmured in a voice thick with passion. He moved deliberately against her, starting an erotic ripple that coursed up from her belly to encompass her entire being. “Will you have me at last?”

Rosalynde was beyond denying him anything. One of her hands circled his neck, sliding along the pronounced muscles of his shoulder and back.
There’s a man worth having
, she recalled the awestruck comment made by some woman of Dunmow. She’d agreed at the time and she still did, but for reasons that could not be more different. He was a man worth having no matter what the chasm between them was, and that very realization erased even her last few doubts. It was as if joy suddenly filled her, as if an odd sort of serenity washed over her with all its attendant happiness. There was no wrong when two people shared such intensity of feeling. Such desire was a gift to be treasured, a blessing bestowed upon them by a benign and understanding God. It was not lust, she understood with almost painful clarity. It was not lust but love.

Tears started in her eyes as that thunderous truth struck her. Emotions caught in her throat and in a sob she turned her face away from him.

“Blacksword …” she whispered as his mouth pressed feverish kisses to her ear and neck and throat. “Blacksword …”

“Aric,” he murmured as his tongue traced an exquisite pattern in her ear. One of his hands cupped her breasts, and she stiffened at the perfect thrill it sent through her. “I am Aric, Rosalynde. Your husband.”

“Yes,” she replied as her nipples tightened in response. “You are Aric, my husband.”

My love, she added silently when his lips caught hers in a fiery kiss. As she succumbed to this new wonder, this new understanding of his place in her life, Rosalynde’s thoughts tumbled in disjointed happiness. They’d kissed at the handfasting ceremony, but this, she now knew, was the true kiss that pledged her vow. As he slowly turned round and round, holding her with desperate fervor, kissing her as if he must consume her, she did not hold back a thing. She came to him with complete awareness and total acceptance. His breath was her breath. His heartbeat was her own. Their passion was a mutual thing.

Their love was inevitable.

But their lovemaking sadly was not. Once more the door to the great hall opened. Once more light spilled out across the darkened yard. But this time a lantern swung from the hands of a solitary figure, and this time the light found their corner.

Rosalynde was much too overwhelmed with emotion to react at first. Too besotted by the name she’d put to her feelings to think or even to move. But Aric’s response to the interruption was immediate.

“Begone from here, fool!” he said with a snarl as he used his wide shoulders to protect her identity from prying eyes. “Begone from here or suffer the consequences.”

Yes, begone
, Rosalynde echoed silently as she pressed a kiss against the rough wool at Aric’s chest.

“If that is the Lady Rosalynde, then ’tis you who shall suffer the consequences!” young Cleve’s voice hissed furiously.

At once Rosalynde’s head came up. Aric’s hands tightened on her arms, but he did not stop her when she wrenched free of his embrace. As she faced the boy who shook now with the depths of his anger—or was it disappointment? she wondered as she took in his pale face—she tried to marshal her thoughts.

“Please, Cleve. You must understand—”

“ ’Tis clear enough for even a fool to understand!”

“No, no. If you would just listen!”

“This is not your concern, pup,” Aric said warningly. His arm came around Rosalynde’s shoulders and he pulled her possessively against him. “I suggest you take yourself off.”

The boy sent the towering man a scathing look, then his eyes turned urgently to Rosalynde. “Come with me, milady. Just leave him now and this can all be forgotten,” he pleaded.

Behind her Rosalynde felt the warmth of Aric’s chest, and also the tension he barely restrained. With a slow shake of her head she stared at Cleve.

“It’s not that simple.”

“Bedamned if it is not! D’you think you’re the first maiden to swoon at the feet of a man she can never have!” His eyes narrowed and he took a step forward. The light swung wildly in his hands, casting grim dancing shadows across them all. “D’you think you’re the first maiden to go to her marriage bed no longer a virgin!”

“Hold your accursed tongue, boy. Or else I’ll tear it
from your head! If you care for her as you profess to, you’ll not be so loose with her honor!”

Cleve drew himself up to his fullest height and glared at the man who held Rosalynde so easily. “Her honor is defiled only by you. She’s too besotted to see that, but I am not.” His eyes came back to her. “I beg you, milady. Put him from you before you come to grief. Even now your father seeks an honorable man to be your husband. Do not ruin your life with a one such as him!” Then with a stiff bow that was more an insult, given the circumstances, he turned and stalked away.

But Cleve’s departure did not ease the tension that gnawed at Rosalynde. As darkness enveloped them once more she was forced to face reality. No matter the feelings that swelled within her for Aric, no matter his noble bearing and the thread of decency she knew ran deep within him, she could not change facts. She was from noble lineage; for her, marriage to another of her class was inevitable. Aric—Blacksword—was a criminal, a slave, a servant. No father in his right mind would sanction such a match. Most especially not hers.

Aric’s arm moved down to circle her waist, and with an easy tug he turned her to face him. But his expression too was serious as he met her somber stare.

“This changes nothing. He knows. Your father must soon know. But it changes nothing.”

“It changes everything,” she whispered as an infinite sadness engulfed her. She bowed her head and leaned heavily against him. “It changes everything.” Then she straightened up and pulled back from him. “I must return to my chamber. You’d best go to your own … wherever it is you sleep.”

“If Cleve chooses to tell your father, the fact that you sleep alone tonight will change naught.” His hand reached
out to finger a loose tendril of her wild dark hair. “Stay with me, Rose. We’ll face your father together. I promise you, it will be easier than you think.”

Tears started in her eyes at the sultry pull of his slow, husky words, tears of frustration and helplessness and overwhelming sorrow. It could not be, no matter how much she might want it. He and she could never be together. To meet secretly, even this one time, would only make it worse later on. Unable to speak, she lifted her misty eyes to him and shook her head. Then she backed away, turned, and fled across the yard.

Rosalynde did not seek her chamber, for she knew too well the tortures that awaited her in her bed: Visions of Aric. Dreams of his caress. No, her chamber was the last place she could go. But there was no other place of solace either. When she paused at the edge of the garden, winded from her rapid flight, she knew it too was the wrong place. The garden was filled with memories of Aric. But then, everything was.

In final desperation she made her weary way to the dark and empty chapel. In the quiet of the night it seemed almost to protect her in its close, tomb-like atmosphere. But though she slumped down onto her knees, though she clasped her hands together and tried desperately to pray, this time she found no comfort. Whether the oft-repeated phrases of the well-known prayers, or her own fumbling attempts, this time the words would not come.

As she huddled there in the dark, miserable and silently weeping, the truth was inescapable. She could not pray to be rid of this problem, of this man who tormented her night and day. She could not pray to be rid of him because in her heart she knew that she could not bear to let him go.

19

The rising sun was but a faded spot of light in a heavy gray sky. It was most appropriate, given Rosalynde’s dismal mood. After a miserable, sleepless night she had risen with no clearer idea of what to do than before. She stood in the still-empty yard, staring across the way toward her little garden—her pleasaunce—and wondering if it might rain. It had not rained once since she’d come home. Not once. That was good for the planting, of course. The villagers had labored long and hard to prepare the fields. But now they needed rain for their crops and she needed relief from the forced cheerfulness of endless sunshine.

As if to punctuate her feelings, a distant rumble sounded the threat of a storm to come. With a disconsolate sigh Rosalynde raised her face to the oppressive sky. Rain would be good, she thought. She would welcome it gladly, if only because it might wash everything clean, take the dust from the air, and freshen the stale earth.

But it would still not bring relief to her dire predicament. It seemed that nothing would. Cleve would inform her father of all he’d seen; Aric would either be punished or banished; and she would be forced into marriage with the first acceptable suitor her father could find. But Aric was unlikely to accept that situation easily. He would reveal
their handfast vow, and then only heaven knew what would transpire.

She wrapped her arms around her waist, trembling from the emotional exhaustion. In the long hours of the night she had wrestled with her feelings. From one extreme to the other she had swayed, sometimes hating Blacksword for coming between her and her father, and at other times admitting to the love that she bore for him. Yet no matter how her moods swung, there seemed no way to avoid the inevitable. He would tell her father the truth and he would very likely die for it. That, above all, was the one thing she could not resign herself to.

A gust of wind stirred the dusty bailey, building a quick whirlwind before it subsided. Across the yard several squires stumbled from their quarters, shoving and jostling one another good-naturedly. As she watched, Cleve came into view, walking alone, not participating in the others’ horseplay. When she started toward him she was not sure what she would say. She only knew she must convince him to hold his peace.