EPILOGUE
Chalford Hill, South of Gloucester
1206 A.D.
“Touch me,” she whispered. “Touch me, you brute. Let me feel you.”
Maxton didn’t need to be told twice. Mostly because this moment was a race against time. With a growl, he picked up his wife and carried her to their bed, a very big bed that usually had three little girls in it at night, three little girls that refused to sleep in their own beds and a father who was too soft to make them do it.
So, moments in the bed with only the parents were far and few between.
He wasn’t going to keep his lusty wife waiting.
Once on the mattress, he loosened the fastens on her surcoat, pulling at them as she feigned a struggle. She liked that sometimes, for him to dominate her, and he loved it as well. Whenever she called him a brute, he knew what was expected of him. He roughed her up a little bit, but it was all in good fun. Easing the shift and dress off her shoulders, her breasts popped free and he could get his mouth onto a warm and tender nipple.
As he suckled her furiously, Andressa cried out softly, holding his head to her breast as if he was a starving child nursing against her. Given that they’d had three children in five years, suckling breasts that weren’t full of milk were rare these days. Not that he cared; he’d suckle her any way he could, but he didn’t like leaving his children hungry. At the moment, their youngest child was almost three years of age, and Andressa’s breasts weren’t full of milk.
It was a thrilling moment.
Pushing her back on the bed, Maxton continued to nurse hungrily at her breasts as his hands caressed her buttocks and stroked her thighs. He loved her thighs, long and silky things, and when he gently stroked the dark fluff of curls between her legs, she thrust her pelvis forward, trying to lure his fingers into her body.
Maxton knew that and responded by slipping a finger into her tight, wet sheath, feeling her gasp with pleasure. She was very moist and he refused to wait any longer. They had a very active and healthy sex life, even with the little girls who knew no boundaries, so they had to take their opportunities when they could. Unfastening his breeches, he let them fall to his ankles and put the tip of his hard, throbbing phallus against her warm and wet folds.
“Tell me you love me, Andressa of Loxbeare,” he murmured, gently kissing her chin, her mouth. “Tell me that I am your everything.”
Andressa was bucking against him, trying to force him into her body. “You are my everything and more,” she whispered. “Give me your son, Max. Let me bear your son this time.”
Those words drove Maxton wild. He thrust into her, listening to her gasp with the sheer pleasure of it. She cried out softly as he thrust again and again, seating himself to the hilt, feeling her tight wetness around him. It was sheer bliss. Once fully seated, he held her buttocks against his pelvis and began to thrust into her.
Andressa clung to him, feeling wishing he could bury himself deeper. He was well-endowed and satisfied her every time, but she was so desperate for the man that she always wanted more. As he thrust into her, she had to put her hands up so he wouldn’t push her right off of the bed with his sheer power. With every thrust, he ground his pelvis against hers and she could feel sparks when their bodies met. His lips were against her forehead, kissing her softly as he made love to her.
It was heaven.
“Mama!”
Maxton froze, looking at Andressa with an expression between disappointment and surprise.
“Damnation,” he hissed. “Not now. Please, not now.”
Andressa grasped his buttocks, forcing him to continue. “Keep going,” she breathed. “The door is locked. They cannot get in.”
Maxton tried; with God as his witness, he tried. His wife’s beautiful body had him trapped, and all he wanted to do was release himself into her and feel her tight body as she released around him, too. That heavenly throbbing that was something he lived for, every day of his life.
“Mama!” Now, they were banging on the door. “Dada, open!”
Maxton tried to resume his thrusts, ignoring the sounds of three little girls demanding their attention, but his concentration fractured when the banging grew worse and someone started crying. He couldn’t stand it when his babies cried. It was Ceri, the littlest; he recognized her voice. In his arms, Andressa started to laugh.
“My God, Max,” she declared, grabbing her husband by the hair and pulling his head from the crook of her neck. When their eyes met, her laughter only grew. “There is no use in continuing this. With Ceri weeping, the entire world stops and we both know it.”
He sighed heavily, a look of utter apology on his face. “I am sorry, love,” he said. “But… she is so young. She does not understand why I have locked the door on her.”
“She should be taking her nap, with her nurse present. Where in the world is that woman?”
“Probably sleeping, too. You know how she falls asleep when the girls do.”
Andressa rolled her eyes and, giving the man a loud kiss, pushed him away from her and tossed her skirts down.
“Go, Dada,” she said as she climbed off the bed. “Go to your baby girl. Make sure she understands that she is more important than her mother.”
Maxton sheepishly pulled up his breeches, tying them off. “That is not true.”
“It is.”
“That is not fair. I had very high hopes for this interlude, as you know.”
“We will never have a son this way.”
“Is that all you want? My son?”
Andressa laughed as she brushed at her skirts, smoothing them. “Of course not,” she said. “You are all I dream of, my love. But next time, we shall have to wait until the children are most definitely asleep and escape to some chamber where they cannot find us. Mayhap we shall go to the next city simply to be sure.”
Maxton laughed softly as he watched her cross the floor. From the woman he met those years ago, that terribly starved pledge, to the woman she was today was like looking at two different people. She had filled out over the years, with beautiful, full breasts, a long torso, and a womanly shape that every man she came across noticed. Maxton had been forced to threaten and scowl at more men than he could count once they caught sight of his elegant wife with her beautiful face and delicious figure.
He considered himself a lucky man, indeed.
“We shall revisit this later tonight,” he assured her, turning away from the door in the hope that his full erection would quickly die down. “I promise you, later tonight when they are all asleep.”
Andressa cast him a very dubious expression before unbolting the door and opening it. Instantly, three little girls bum-rushed in, as they’d been leaning against the panel. While the eldest one, Danae, stopped at her mother, the other two ran straight to Maxton. He bent over, scooping four-year-old Melisandra and three-year-old Ceri into his arms. Ceri was indeed weeping and Maxton kissed her wet face.
“Now, now,” he said. “Why the tears, sweetheart? There is no need to cry.”
Melisandra, her arms wrapped around her father’s neck, looked at her sister seriously. “She slapped me,” she said flatly. “I slapped her back.”
Maxton’s eyebrows lifted as he realized the situation. “I see,” he said. “Ceri, you must be kind to your sister. No slapping. We have discussed that.”
True to form, Ceri ignored him. She was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed cherub who was extremely smart. She knew how to get around her father. Rubbing her eyes, she lay her head on his shoulder, weeping softly, and Maxton knew that was the end of his scolding. That was all he could manage. As he looked at his wife, who simply shook her head in resignation, another figured appeared in the doorway.
It was Cullen, clad in mail and weapons. He looked at the little girls in the room with surprise.
“I thought they were sleeping,” he said.
Andressa sighed heavily. “You know better than that,” she said even as she cradled her eldest against her. “No one sleeps when they are supposed to around here.”
Cullen grinned; he’d been serving Maxton since the man had taken possession of his new property of Chalford Hill and was essentially one of the family now. He, too, knew that the Loxbeare brood never slept when they were supposed to. Even so, Chalford Hill was a remarkable place to raise a family, and Maxton and Andressa had the start of a big one. The fortress was also very rich property with a large castle, something that Maxton had turned into a military outpost for William Marshal.
But there was a history to that.
After the events at St. Blitha those years ago, it had been Maxton, Cullen, Kress, Achilles, Alexander, and Christopher de Lohr who had gathered the army to oust Andressa’s aunt from the property, but before Maxton unleashed all of that military might and risked damaging the place, he’d had a meeting with the old woman and offered her a good deal of money to vacate the place as well as the promise he would not arrest her for stealing her niece’s inheritance.
As it turned out, Hildreth du Bose was very greedy, and knowing she could not fight off such an army, she readily agreed to the proposal and vacated the castle without incident. Now, she lived somewhere in the south of France, or did the last they’d heard. In truth, Maxton didn’t care what happened to the old woman and Andressa surely didn’t care, so she was forgotten nearly the moment she’d left Chalford Hill.
Andressa had regained what was rightfully hers without a drop of blood being shed, but the caveat was that it became a military installation, and a powerful one. All three children had been born here, including Danae, who had been born only six weeks after the incident at St. Blitha. Maxton had no sooner married the woman and return her to her ancestral home when she gave birth in the middle of the night, quite quickly and with very little trouble, to a small but healthy baby girl.
Maxton had immediately been in love.
It hadn’t mattered that Danae Eleanor of Loxbeare hadn’t been his biological daughter. He couldn’t have loved her more if she had been. All that mattered was that she was healthy, as was her mother, and Maxton and Andressa embarked on a new marriage with a new baby.
It was everything either of them could have hoped for.
Even now, as Maxton held two more daughters in his arms, he thought quite possibly that no man had ever been happier or more content. Life was good, and everything was wonderful, but as he stood there and reflected on his good fortune, he noticed a missive in Cullen’s hand.
“What did you bring?” he asked the man. “Did a rider come?”
Cullen nodded. “You did not hear the sentries?”
Maxton cleared his throat softly, glancing at his wife, who was fighting off a grin. “Nay,” he said. “I was… occupied.”
Cullen smirked as he broke the seal on the parchment. “It’s from the Marshal,” he said, carefully unfolding it. His gaze fell on the words written and, quickly, his eyebrows lifted in surprise. “It seems that the Marshal is raising an army to go to Ireland.”
The good mood of the chamber began to fade as Maxton knew what that meant – that William was asking for his sword and his support. He didn’t even have to hear the words; he just knew. He looked at the girls in his arms, feeling sad as if already missing them, before replying.
“When?” he asked simply.
“Soon,” Cullen said. “He goes on to say that both de Lohr brothers are part of his army, and since Kevin de Lara serves David, he will be involved. So is Gart. But isn’t Gart somewhere in Devon now?”
Maxton nodded. “Dunster Castle,” he said. “He has a new wife and family now.”
Cullen turned back to the missive. “Savernake has committed men, which means Dash will be going,” he said. “So has de Winter. That means Bric will be returning to the land of his birth to fight other Irishmen.”
Maxton thought on the fiery Irishman, someone he’d come to know well over the past few years. “Bric’s loyalty is unquestionably to de Winter even though his heart is in the land of his birth,” he said. “This will be a difficult campaign for him. What else does it say?”
Cullen continued reading down at the bottom. “Sherry and Achilles serve William directly, so they shall be commanding the Marshal armies,” he said. “But Kress isn’t mentioned.”
“That is because William is sending Kress into Wales for an important diplomatic mission,” he said. “A marriage alliance, I believe.”
“Kress is an excellent diplomat.”
“Aye, he is,” Maxton agreed. “Is that all it says?”
Cullen shook his head. “He asks for men you can spare to send to Ireland,” he said. Then he lowered the missive. “I would like to go, Max.”
Maxton nodded. “You will, as will I,” he said, glancing at his wife to see that, already, she wasn’t happy about this in the least. He set the girls to their feet, ushering them towards their mother. “I must speak with Cullen about this. Please take the girls with you when you go.”
He kissed Andressa on the cheek, a gentle invitation for her to leave so the men could speak privately. Andressa picked up the weepy Ceri, but she didn’t leave right away. She was fixed on her husband.
“Max,” she said reproachfully. “Last year, you spent almost nine months in France for William. You promised you would never be gone overly long again.”
He kissed her again, gently turning her towards the door. “And I will keep that promise,” he said. “But I cannot ignore William’s summons. You know that. Let me speak with Cullen about it and I will talk to you later.”
Grossly displeased, Andressa did as she was told, taking the three little girls out of the chamber. They didn’t want to go, which made it difficult, and Maxton could hear them whining and complaining all the way down the stairs to the floor below. He heard Andressa, trying to lure them away with talk of puppies. That usually worked. When the sounds faded, he finally turned to Cullen, who was looking at him with a grin on his face. Maxton frowned.
“What now?” he demanded. “Why do you look at me like that?”
Cullen laughed softly. “Because you don’t want to be away from those women as much as they don’t want you to be away from them,” he said. “Even now, you miss your children, Max. I will be honest – I’ve never seen such a change in a man.”
Maxton’s frown turned into an ironic smirk of sorts. Ignoring the man’s statement, he took the missive from Cullen and began to read through it.
“What I did not tell you was that the foray into Wales will involve me, Sherry, and Achilles also,” he said quietly. “Andie does not know that yet.”
“When will you tell her?”
“When I leave.”
Cullen knew that was the wise thing to do, considering how attached Maxton and Andressa were to one another. She never took his departures well.
“You will note on the missive that William would like us to convene with our army at Lioncross Abbey Castle, Chris de Lohr’s seat, in six months,” he said. “It is clear he wants to make the crossing to Ireland after the spring thaw. But I did not want to say all of that in front of your wife.”
Magnus was still reading the missive. “Six months will come before we realize it,” he said. “And I shall be in Wales with Kress for part of that time. Andie is going to be quite unhappy.”
Cullen knew that. He had the benefit of not having a wife, and in times like this, it was a good thing. But over the course of the past few years, he’d had the privilege of watching Maxton and Andressa, and seeing the love they had for each other. It had made him wonder if he was missing something. More and more, he was thinking that he might be. There were times when he wished he had a wife and children, too.
But not today. There was much on the horizon coming, something that a wife and children wouldn’t figure in to.
“When do you leave for Wales, then?” he asked. “And I am assuming you want me to remain here.”
Maxton nodded. “It will be sometime next month,” he said. “The last I heard, Kevin was supposed to accompany us since his father’s lands straddle the marches. Kevin knows the area we are going to quite well.”
Cullen nodded as he absorbed the information. “And his brother?” he asked quietly, bringing up a rather delicate subject among their tightly-knight group. “What about Sean?”
“You know as much as I do about him.”
“But what has become of him, Max? I have heard such terrible things about the man.”
Maxton had, too. It was a sad subject for them all. “I do not know what he has become,” he said after a moment. “No one does. He entered into the king’s service and now has become the man’s henchman. If John wants a woman, Sean kidnaps her and brings her to the king. If John wants someone murdered, Sean will do it. I do not judge the man when it comes to the abuse of men, for certainly I am in no position to judge him, but the stories of the women and children… that is quite horrific. I have heard from David that Kevin will not even speak to his brother any longer because of it.”
Cullen had heard the same thing. “Speaking of murder,” he ventured, “I also heard that it was Sean who was sent to find Richard’s bastard son, the one the Holy Father tried to place on John’s throne those years ago. Have you heard anything about that? Some say he murdered the boy.”
Maxton shook his head at the horrible reputation Sean de Lara now had, worse than anything the Executioner Knights had ever suffered. At least their reputation had some rational to it, acts committed during war and conflict for the most part, but Sean’s reputation had descended into madness. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for King John, and everyone knew it.
“Confidentially, I was told that he had a hand in Arthur of Brittany’s death,” Maxton said after a moment. “No one can seem to locate either boy, in fact, though I believe Lothar has tried to find Richard’s bastard. That’s what I heard, anyway. And he has given up. It is as if they have both boys have simply vanished, with fates unknown.”
“Both heirs to the throne, both missing and presumed killed by de Lara.”
“Exactly.”
Cullen pondered the darker rumors that had been flying about England for the past few years, many of them revolving around Sean. “They call him the Lord of the Shadows now,” he said. “The man has become part of John’s darkness.”
Maxton waved him off. “All men must choose their own paths and far be it from us to weigh and measure what those paths might be,” he said. “Sean de Lara is not my concern. My venture into Wales and Ireland is. How do you suppose my wife is going to accept any of this?”
Cullen scratched his head. “She is not,” he said flatly. “Mayhap send for your father to come and stay with her while you are away. He loves the woman and his granddaughters. Why not ask Magnus?”
Maxton thought on his father, a man he’d not spoken to in many years until his marriage to Andressa. At her urging, they both went to Loxbeare Cross Castle to tell him of their marriage, and found an old and lonely old man who had been very surprised to see them. His brother, Emmett, had been welcoming, and Magnus had been surprisingly welcoming also, especially when he saw that Maxton had married.
It had been a shock that his wayward son had finally taken a wife.
Much had been hashed out the day Maxton had arrived at his childhood home. He remembered that day very well. He had spoken to his father about so many things, asking the old man why he’d never responded to his missives, only to be told that Magnus had been too overcome with sadness and despair at Maxton’s absence to do it. He burned the missives, hoping that would ease his sorrow at a son who never wished to return home. He thought if he ignored the issue, it would go away.
It didn’t.
Oddly enough, there was no disapproval for Maxton’s reputation; in fact, Magnus had been proud of his son who had fought with Richard in The Levant, and who had returned to England and wed an heiress. So many things had been discussed during that visit, and it was a relationship that was still being restored, even more so when Maxton was informed that his little sister, Lucy, had died in childbirth with her first child a few years before.
Maxton had wept deeply for the loss of his sister.
Which was why his own daughters were perhaps so precious to him, and to his father, too. Magnus had traveled to Chalford Hill for the birth of his younger two granddaughters, and he came to visit them at least twice a year. Maxton never thought he’d enjoy a good relationship with his father, ever, but time and understanding – and the addition of four women into his life – had changed all of that.
Life, as he knew it, had changed altogether.
“Mayhap I shall ask my father to come and stay with my family,” he finally said. He began to hear the cries of his children wafting through the lancet window and when he went to peer from the window to the bailey below, he could see them playing with the friendly dogs that wandered the bailey. They did so love the dogs, and the sight made him smile. “In fact, I shall go ask my wife if she would like for my father to stay with her while I am away. Mayhap that will soften the blow of my departure.”
Cullen smiled wryly. “I doubt it. But best of luck.”
Maxton couldn’t disagree with him, but he had to try. With thoughts of his father on his mind, he quit the master’s chamber where they were, making his way out of the keep and heading out to the bailey where his children were rolling in the dirt with the dogs.
A more joyous thing to see, he could have never imagined. As Maxton came upon his wife, who was standing there in a dress the color of wine, with beautiful embellishments around the elbows and wrists and neck, he took a moment simply to look at her. He couldn’t remember when she hadn’t been part of him, and he of her. For a man who had spent his life engaged in dark and dirty deeds, the fact that he’d found peace and love was something that still baffled him, and there wasn’t one day that he didn’t give thanks for all that he had, for the children that he had, and for the woman who was his entire reason for living.
For a man who had been wandering and searching his entire life, wondering if there was more to life than what he’d known, looking into Andressa’s sweet face told him everything he needed to know.
The Executioner Knight had found a love story for the ages.
Finally, he was home.
* THE END *
Children of Maxton and Andressa
House of de Long
Danae (Duh-NAY)
Melisandra
Ceri
Magnus
Aeron
Kane
Karis
Madoc
The Executioner Knights: