Chapter
XXIV

Dreams relinquish their mastery, yielding to drowsiness, and Christian’s wits surfaced from oblivion. A curious and disturbing state was this peace, he mused. He lay on his back, unwilling to rouse further, for when he did he knew he would suffer all the agitation of a spider with a torn web. It was almost Greek in its tragedy, his inability to trust his conquest. As if to underscore his apprehension, one of his eyes popped open to search through the fading darkness for Nora.

He spied a curve, and beholding it was all that was necessary to evoke a twitch between his legs. The other eye flew open, and he snaked his body over the mattress to plant his hips against her buttocks. Burrowing beneath the covers, he found her neck. Nora snuggled into the curve of his body, and he grinned a foolish grin he would never have allowed Inigo or anyone else to see. She had forgiven him, and he was silly with the generosity of her trucemaking.

If only he could be sure it was Nora who willed their communion and not the spells of goodwife Winnie. Nora had laughed at him for following Winnie’s instructions about the mandrake root. Even now he blushed to think he’d believed the old woman when she said he mustn’t pull the root from the ground himself. Still, Nora had appeared so quickly that night, she could have been ensorcelled to submit to him. Would her love disappear with the magic?

Even as he rubbed his groin against her pliant flesh, Christian had to thrust this fear aside. She had giggled at the notion that she wanted him because he had bewitched her. With an endearing blush she’d adjured him, protesting that his own sweet body was magic enough, and then proving it by worshiping it with her mouth. After this proof, he had spirited Nora to his chamber and refused to let her out for two days.

The two days hadn’t been long enough to ease his lust, born as it was of a release from the fear that he would never have her again in any way. Peace was his undeserved reward—peace that arose from the knowledge that he was loved in spite of his most grievous faults and transgressions, and in spite of his rutting and uncontrollable lust. He felt Nora’s hand fish behind her to clasp his penis, and he smiled. Mayhap his lust was not a fault in the eyes of its object. He sucked in his breath when she squeezed him.

“No wonder Mag caviled at giving you up,” she said.

He shoved himself into her grip and bit the back of her neck. “She’s had me since I was a babe and thinks she owns me.”

“Not now. I do.” Nora turned to face him.

“No one owns—God’s blood!”

Christian’s entire body arched as Nora pinched him with one hand while bringing her other hand up to cup him and squeeze. Before he could recover, she dove beneath the cover, took him in her mouth, and sucked hard. Clawing at the sheets, he only succeeded in tangling his arms into immobility. He fought the covers, trying to pull free of Nora’s mouth at the same time. He almost won, but she outwitted him by shoving his thighs apart and using her teeth.

Searing jabs of pleasure drove him past thought, and he lifted his hips from the bed, pumping into her mouth while he writhed and gasped with a loss of control beyond his experience. When she squeezed the pouch beneath his sex, he hurled himself up blindly, lunging for her. Trapping his giggling wife beneath him, he set about erasing her triumphant smirk.

Though it cost him, he held her motionless, legs apart, while he cast the covers from the bed. Placing his hand over her sex, he cupped her firmly, yet did nothing else. She tried to wiggle, but his only concession was to lick her breasts. For long minutes he devoted himself to sprinkling long kisses on her nipples while refusing to remove his hand. He could feel her swelling and moistening, yet he kept his hand still.

Knowing she was trying to guess when he would move, he kept her in suspense as he took a nipple between his teeth and tugged, first one way and then another. Stiff and wet when he released it, the nipple jiggled before his eyes, and Nora hissed at him. Chuckling, he molded his lips around the peak and sucked. Then he stopped.

Still holding her, he lay his head on her breast and waited, listening to her ragged breathing. When it was almost normal, he slowly pressed with his index finger, sliding between moist folds, drawing it up to the apex of her thighs. He repeated the act again before parting her and loving her with his mouth. He kept at it until her nails scored his back. At that sign he rose, lifted her legs, bracing her thighs on his arms, and shoved into her.

It was then that he misjudged. His penis already ripe and painfully swollen, it took only that plunge to vanquish his precarious control. He rammed hard, and Nora clawed at his back. Working his hips with raw fury, he pleasured himself while she tried to swallow him with her mouth and her womb.

To his awe, Nora grasped his thighs and manipulated him to her own satisfaction. She forced his hips up against hers, then released a crescendo of groans as she climaxed. Her moist flesh sucked at him, and he ground himself into her mindlessly until he burst, spewing his wet release into that demanding vessel.

As he quivered in the aftermath of his pleasure, awareness returned. He opened his eyes to find himself on all fours, embedded in his voluptuous tormentor. Bewildered, he looked about the chamber, unable to believe his surroundings were the same, for surely he was not.

Sated though he was, a feral possessiveness flooded him, and he briefly considered sweeping this woman away to Castle Montfort and locking her in a tower where no man but he could touch her. Madness.

A whimper escaped him as he pulled free of Nora, then lowered himself on top of her. He sighed, and she stroked his hair. He smiled at her whispered words of admiration, vowing to himself not to let her know how near to submission she’d driven him. There was no imagining what she would do to him if he surrendered mastery. Intrigued by the thought, he drifted into slumber wrapped in the soft arms and legs of his love.

Christian woke some hours later to the sight of Nora lacing her overgown. A caul of silver rested on the back of her head, in no way containing the wild locks that curled around her face and shoulders. She tied a last bow and looked up to find him watching her. At his frown, she sidled away from the bed, then sprang for the door. He leapt after her and threw himself against the portal in time to block her way. She bumped into his chest.

Catching her by the shoulders, he set her away from him. “No, sweeting.”

“This is the third day,” she said, folding her arms across her chest.

“I don’t care.”

“1 have work to do.”

He pointed behind her. “In that bed.”

“You’re afraid.”

He lifted one brow. “Not of you.”

“Yes, of me.”

“Get back in bed, wife. I’ve more bawd’s tricks to teach you.”

“Christian de Rivers, your subtleties and cozening fool me not.” She stepped close and poked him in the chest with one finger. “When roused you’re capable of all evil, but you’ve cast aside your devil’s mask with me, and I won’t allow you to don it again. You’re afraid the past days have been but a spell. That’s why you’re acting like a bee with a plucked stinger.”

Trying not to look as worried as he felt, Christian caught the hand that jabbed at him and pressed it flat on his chest. Grinning lasciviously, he drew the hand down to his groin and thrust against it.

“Come, love, I need you.” Nuzzling his wife’s cheek, he lowered his voice. “Ripe as a turnip, I am, and as hard. Don’t leave me in such pain.”

“Deceitful jackdaw.”

Having worked himself into a fit of hot lust, Christian was slow to react when Nora wriggled free.

She pointed at him, breathing heavily. “Naughty, naughty cozener of innocent maids. Unsporting, that’s what you are. I love you beyond all reason, but I can’t—I mean … Bedevil you, Christian, I’m sore!”

“Oh.” He blinked at her, then snatched her hand to kiss it. “Damn and curse me, sweeting, I’m a rutting, selfish monstrosity.”

“Mayhap not so terrible as that.”

Stroking the back of her hand, he kept his gaze fixed on the path of his fingers over that small expanse of white skin. “What if you change? All this time you’ve been near the amulet.” He touched the locket suspended from its chain around his neck.

“Goodwife Winnie is even more of a charlatan than you, my lord.” She snuggled up to him and whispered in his ear, “Tideman says she tricks ignorant village wives into paying for fertility spells before they discover they’re with child.”

“The love potion worked.”

“I use those herbs and spices to cure bad digestion and coughs.”

“Bad digestion?”

“I will swear on the Bible.”

“Nay, I would never think you a liar, sweeting. I know better.” Christian sighed, unable to quell his growing desolation.

“I know,” Nora said. “You can watch me step out of the chamber, and at the least sign that I hate you, jump at me.”

“You’re laughing at me.”

“Only a little.”

“Verily, you are a cruel mistress.”

He sighed again, but turned and opened the door. Holding her hand, he nodded, and she took a step over the threshold. Twisting, she faced him and began to walk backward, slowly, smiling at him. Not returning the smile, he eyed her, his arm outstretched until his fingers could no longer stretch to reach her. He stopped breathing when she gained the top step of the staircase, but Nora only waved and vanished down the steps.

Cursing, Christian slammed his fist into the door frame. He should never have risked separation. He would lose her again, and mayhap die from it. Something pattered on the stairs. He glanced up, and a black-haired arrow shot at him. He toppled back as Nora threw herself into his arms.

“Boo!”

“Nora?”

He fell against the door frame, his arms full of curves and velvet. He felt a wet mouth on his neck.

Between kisses, Nora giggled. “There’s magic, but it never fades, you delicious piece.” She touched her nose to his, and he began to smile. “It is I who should be afraid to leave you unguarded. Any woman free of her winding sheet would give her whole dowry to drag you behind a bush.”

“I only yield to black-haired witches with rose-petal cheeks and heads stuffed with Greek and Roman poetry.”

“Then yield now, before I must needs see to the pickling and the making of almond butter and violet syrup.”

Christian allowed his wife to force him down to the floor, not caring if the door was thrown wide open. “I yield, mistress, but only if you promise not to pickle a certain ripe cucumber.”

This time when he woke, Nora was gone and a tub of hot water sat near a newly laid fire. Weary, his muscles aching, Christian took his time in bathing and dressing. When he finally emerged downstairs, he could smell roasting meat that signaled the approach of the evening meal. Nora wasn’t in the kitchens, though jars of syrup and pots of butter attested to her day’s labor. When he stuck his finger in an open jar of violet syrup, Cook chased him away. A turnspit smirked at him and said that Lady Nora was in her drying shed.

He was so addled he offered amusement for kitchen boys, Christian thought, scowling. He marched out of the house and through the kitchen gardens to the shed where Nora kept her herbs, spices, and tools. She was likely brewing some noxious tea for a sick villager or making a poultice, he mused. Since she had taken up her duties, the peasants looked to her for succor, as they had to his mother in times past.

Christian reached for the door of the shed, which was ajar, but his hand paused as he heard a man’s voice.

“The tincture was a miracle. I drank it as you instructed, and a marvelous peace overtook me.”

“It was the strain of fighting Christian and your own confusion at once,” Nora said. “In time your humors will balance and your soul will calm, and perhaps then—”

“It’s happened already. That’s what I wanted to tell you. I remembered. Dear Nora, I …”

Christian turned his head to catch the rapidly fading words. It was Blade. Why was he whispering? Christian’s eyes narrowed as he perceived the quality of Blade’s low voice. Like a tightly wound lute string it vibrated, as warm as sunlit honey. Christian had heard that intensity in his own voice when he was alone in Nora’s arms.

Easing the door open, he slid inside the drying shed, his gaze seeking Nora. She was standing beneath bunches of flowers and herbs hung on a beam to dry, a bundle of cinquefoil in her hands. The leaves crackled as she leaned close to Blade, and a wisp of a smile brightened her face and seemed to light the shadows in the room.

Christian held his breath, his hand sliding to the hilt of his dagger while he watched Blade bend over his wife, all cynicism and hauteur banished from his expression. As he spoke, his hand stole to Nora’s cheek. Surprise plain in her widened eyes, Nora looked up at him.

“My everlasting thanks,” Blade murmured. He lowered his mouth and covered Nora’s.

His own bellow of rage caught Christian off guard as he hurled himself at Blade. Tearing Nora from the youth’s arms, he rammed his shoulder into Blade’s stomach. They both plunged to the ground, knocking over a table and a box as they went. Blade collapsed beneath him and banged his head on the packed earth floor. While the boy flailed blindly, Christian grasped a handful of doublet and drew his dagger. Rage burned through his body, sending all else into nothingness. He stuck the tip of the dagger into the soft flesh at the base of his victim’s throat.

“Christian, no!”

He cried out, for Nora had taken hold of his blade even as he placed it at Blade’s flesh. The slightest movement on his part would cut her. He froze, his gaze fixed on her fist.

“Remove your hand,” he said.

“You can’t kill him.”

He smiled and met Blade’s eyes. The youth’s pallor and the heaving of his chest were the only signs of his fear.

“You’re mistaken. I would kill him for his thoughts alone, much less for daring to touch you. Now take your hand away so I can hack his head off.”

“He was but thanking me for helping him remember.”

Tossing his head, Christian threw a lock of hair back from his brow. “I know the difference between gratitude and desire.” Jerking Blade closer, he snarled into his face, “Whoreson jade, you’ll tup no more men’s wives.”

Christian got no further, for a mass of prickly brown leaves attacked his face. Dust flew, and he sneezed. As his head jerked in reaction, Blade grabbed his wrist and thrust his hand and dagger away. Off balance, Christian fell sideways, and Blade threw him off completely with a heave of his body.

Christian rolled and, supple as a willow switch, sprang to his feet. Drawing back his arm, he backhanded Blade. The youth fell again, but lunged to the side and clutched a work table for support. Nora shouted Christian’s name and thrust herself between the two as Christian charged. Careening into his wife, Christian picked her up gently, intending to set her aside. She swung her legs instead and wrapped them around his waist while looping her arms about his neck.

“You stop this at once, Christian de Rivers.”

He pawed at her arms and legs. They stuck fast, and he growled with frustration. “This is one puppy you won’t save.” He tried to lift Nora’s hips from their nesting place too near his groin. “Loose me, woman. Think you I’ll let him touch you and destroy us? That’s what he yearns for.”

“It is not,” Blade said. He wiped blood from the corner of his mouth and glared at Christian.

Christian was still trying to pry Nora from his body. “Stay you there but a moment,” he told Blade, “and I’ll be free to kill—”

Nora stifled the rest of his threat by forcing a kiss on him. Christian struggled against the invasion of her tongue and tried to wriggle free of her body, only to stumble and fall against one wall of the shed. Tearing his mouth away, he caught a glimpse of Blade’s back as the youth vanished from the shed.

“He flies. Let me go, Normmmph.”

Her tongue darted into his mouth, and he almost forgot his wrath as she sucked. When she began to rub herself against him, his arms pressed her to his rapidly swelling organ. The heat of his rage fought with the burgeoning inferno between his legs. His undoing came when Nora at last slid from his body, leaving him panting and propped against the wall like a dizzy tippler. Giving him no opportunity to recover, she knelt and released his sex from its cushioned prison.

Coming to his senses, Christian was too late to save himself, for Nora cradled him in one hand and guided his organ to her mouth with the other. His body jerked in a puppetlike response, and he was soon mindlessly thrusting. His anger drowned in passion, he sank to the floor on top of his wife and brought them both to a noisy, joyous climax.

Christian roused long minutes afterward, braced himself up on his elbows, and scowled down at his wife. “You did that apurpose.”

She smiled.

“You said you were sore.”

“I am, even more now.”

Flushing, he pulled free as gently as he could and peeked at his wife’s thighs. Spying reddened flesh, he cursed and stuffed his uncontrollable self back in his clothing. Jerking at laces, he was about to scold Nora and then take off after Blade, when someone outside the shed spoke loudly.

“Well now, Poll, it seems our Kit’s forsaken stews for sheds.”

Christian winced at the sound of Inigo’s voice as he tied a lace.

“Haven’t heard such squawking from a gentry mort since I tupped that hang-bellied priest,” Poll said. “Must have been nigh twenty years ago.”

Nora covered her mouth, but Christian could see her eyes crinkle and brighten and her body shake with stifled giggles. It was his own fault for burning away her shyness with his lust.

Near bursting with the effort to forestall his explosion of temper, he stood, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and yanked her to her feet.

“This is your fault,” he said.

He turned his back and stalked out of the shed, blinking as he emerged into the light. Inigo and Poll were waiting, smirks mounted on their faces like royal standards.

“Ooo,” Poll crooned. “Look at him, all disheveled like a maid what’s been jumped by a lord behind a woodpile.”

Christian tugged at his doublet and refastened his belt. “How would you like to spend a se’night in gaol with about thirty gulls, whipjacks, and cutpurses for entertainment?”

“Now, Kit,” Inigo said, “we but followed the steward’s guidance. We’d have left as he did, but we were worried when you didn’t reply to our messages.”

Nora appeared at his side and placed her hand on his arm. “My lord has been most busy these past few days casting spells on puppies and—”

“Nora!”

Inigo laughed. “The Earl’s in the house. Ready to chew nails, he is. Says if Kit hasn’t thrown himself at Lady Nora’s feet, he’s going to take a riding crop to him.”

Ignoring his wife’s smile, Christian unsheathed his dagger and smoothed a finger down the flat of the blade. “Noses can be chopped off if they’re stuck in places they don’t belong.” Poll retreated, but Inigo only grinned. “Does the whole kingdom busy itself with my affairs?”

“Nay, Kit. Word of your antics only spread as far as the South Bank. Since the Queen isn’t in the city, the court won’t know for weeks.”

“God’s blood, I’ll carve that smirk from your face and wear it as a tourney favor.”

Inigo held up his hands in protest. “I give. Got no wish to kiss the back of your hand like poor old Blade.”

“Blade!” Christian rounded on his startled wife. “You thought I’d give up, you corrupting tease.” He snatched her to him with one hand, shoving his face close to hers. “No man touches you and lives.”

Thrusting her from him, Christian bolted for the house. Inigo called after him.

“The lad rode out to the east. I thought you knew. Wait, Kit, you haven’t heard why we came.”

Christian changed direction and made for the stables, shouting at the grooms for his horse. He was kicking his mount into action by the time Nora chased him down. Oblivious to her cries and those of Inigo, he urged his horse into a gallop along the eastern trail that skirted fields of corn and led to the forest.

Anger flaming anew, Christian strained over the neck of his mount, eyes searching for signs of hoofprints and broken vegetation. Blade’s trail was easy to follow, for his horse had a dented hind shoe. Christian plunged into the darkening forest, knowing he had less than an hour’s light to find his quarry. On and on he rode, his task made easy by Blade’s failure to conceal his passage. Odd. It was as if the boy didn’t fear Christian’s pursuit. Mayhap the little traitor counted on Nora subjugating him entirely. The fool.

Christian pulled his mount up short when he heard a noise. Hardly daring to breathe, he waited while he sorted out the sounds of wind-tossed leaves and the swish of his horse’s tail. There it was, the periodic plop of pebbles being tossed into water. He dismounted without a sound, then raced through the trees toward the plops.

Blade sat on a boulder at the edge of a pool, one knee bent, and tossed pebbles into the water from a collection in his hand. As Christian drew his dagger and crept up behind him, Blade sighed and held the handful of stones over the pool. One by one he rapidly dropped them into the water, then lowered his chin to his knee and studied the ringed waves that spread out from where the stones entered the water. Placing one hand on the boulder, Christian leaned toward the boy and laid the flat of the blade on his cheek.

“Coy little bitch, I’ve found you.”

Blade dodged aside, whipping around to face Christian, and put his hand to his dagger hilt. Christian jumped, landing on top of Blade and squashing the youth’s lighter body beneath his own. In a heart’s beat his dagger was nicking the flesh at the side of Blade’s throat. The youth went limp.

“Giving up so quickly?” Christian asked. “Unsporting of you, marchpane, for I lust after your suffering as much as for your blood.”

Blade turned his head to the side as if to avoid the prick of the dagger. “I told you. I was grateful to Nora because I finally remembered who I was.”

“How unfortunate that your discovery will do you no good.”

“My father was dying when last I saw him.”

“Be quiet.”

“There is only me. I know that much. I’m his only child, spawned when he was already old. Think you he still lives, after grieving for my loss?”

“Keep silent, you whoreson infant cuckolder.”

“Your father was quite young, but mine—”

“Damn your soul.” Christian eased the dagger tip from Blade’s throat. “Your name?”

“Nicholas. Nicholas Edward Fitzstephen. My home is on the Scottish border, a crumbling pile of stone and lichen, if I remember well. The Scots’ raids have drained us, and Father likes not court or city life, so we kept to ourselves. You told me I sounded like an Oxford don. That’s because my old tutor came from there. Father’s mistake was to send me south to Oxford for more study. I never got there.”

“You still might not.”

“God’s arse, Christian, I told you.”

“Cease your protests.” Christian shifted his weight, but still pinned Blade to the boulder. “Curse it, I could have killed you if you hadn’t remembered.”

From behind a tree a voice called, “Lies. If he was going to kill you, you’d be dead.”

Christian sprang off the boulder, whirling to face the owner of that voice. Blade dropped to his side as Jack Midnight sauntered into view followed by a half dozen minions.