Part 3 (1/2)
”The preparations go well. William the Marshal has sent his acknowledgment, as have Salisbury and Tavistoke. Prince John should arrive early in the week, as will Fournier from Normandy, and La Seyne Sur Mer from Mirebeau.”
”The queen's champion?” Nicolaa arched a brow. ”You should indeed be honoured that Eleanor of Aquitaine would send her favoured knight as envoy. A pity the wrinkled old sheep's bladder is too feeble to make the journey herself, but surely a feather for you that she persuaded La Seyne Sur Mer to journey in her stead. Will he partic.i.p.ate in the tourney?”
”It remains to be seen,” De Gournay said, the merest trace of pleasure betrayed in his expression. ”I suspect he might be eager to establish a reputation outside of Brittany.”
”Saints a.s.soil us,” Nicolaa murmured. ”You would share your own laurel wreath with the Scourge of Mirebeau? How generous of you.”
”Wisdom before generosity, my love. The wisdom to see his skill firsthand and judge his mettle by mine own eyes rather than rely solely on the reports of others.”
”It is said he has yet to meet his equal in the lists,” Nicolaa remarked with a sly lack of subtlety.
”He has yet to venture more than a hundred miles from Mirebeau,” Wardieu shot back. ”Much less come to England to meet his match.”
Nicolaa s.h.i.+vered deliciously, riding the ripples of a series of small inner fluctuations. Wardieu angry, or Wardieu impugned usually set the stage for an incomparable bout of lovemaking and she felt her thighs slicken with antic.i.p.ation.
”Then you intend to challenge him?”
”The notion has its merit.”
”But will your bride be sympathetic to the possibility of losing her groom before she has had a chance at true wedded bliss?”
Lucien stared a moment, then gave way to a slow grin. ”Ahh, the crux of the matter. I thought I detected more green in your eyes tonight than was normal.”
”Plague take you, Lucien Wardieu. What, by all the saints, do I have to be jealous of? A timid little widow with knocking knees and a sallow complexion? You forget, I have seen her, my lord; I was present at her wedding to Hubert de Briscourt, and a sorrier sight could not be imagined. Three years of laying fallow beneath an invalid could not have wrought much improvement either, and if the gossip-mongers speak the truth when they say the old viper died of the pox, then she is undoubtedly riddled with the disease herself and will appeal to neither your sense of sight nor smell.”
At that, a laugh escaped him. ”Sir Hubert died of a sixty-year-old heart.”
”Weakened, I am sure, by the sight of a poxy trull waiting in his bed each night.”
”Nicolaa ...” He shook his head slowly, causing sparks of candlelight to glint off the magnificent mane of golden hair. ”Is it any wonder poor Onfroi sweats himself into pools when he is near you? Your tongue is sharp enough to flay any man or woman into a cowering shadow of their former self. Now, come. She cannot be as bad as all that.”
”Have you seen her?” Nicolaa asked pointedly, knowing full well he had not.
”Once,” he admitted. ”I think. The room was very crowded, and she was standing very far away.”
”There, you see? She was so ugly she was kept well out of the way to avoid giving offense.”
Lucien unfolded his thickly muscled arms and moved away from the window. He set his goblet on a nearby table and crossed over to where Nicolaa stood, stopping in front of her. Reaching out, he placed a hand on either trim hip, grasping the slippery silk of her tunic between his fingers and sliding it upward.
”So what would you have me do?” he murmured, casting the flimsy garment aside and watching the fall of black hair drift back down to cover the lusciously nude body. ”Let some other lout pet.i.tion for her hand and win her estates?”
”Is that truly all you want her for? She is very young.”
”I can have youth anytime I want it,” he said, reaching out again, this time to flick aside a ribbon of hair that had tumbled over her breast. ”Along with the whining, and bleating, and tears of inexperience that go hand in hand. No, Nicolaa, I am not marrying her for her youth.”
Knowing the dark eyes were intent upon his face, Lucien deliberately avoided meeting them while a lazy thumb and forefinger began to trace a light pattern around one engorged nipple. The rushlights cast a mellow golden glow over the luminous, satiny curves of her body; the fire crackling in the hearth behind them might have been the sound of the sparks leaping from one heated body to the other.
Nicolaa closed her eyes and leaned boldly into the caressing fingertips. ”Will you bed her?”
”Would you have me ignore her and rouse questions concerning my ... preferences?”
”I would have you kill her,” came the husky whisper, s.h.i.+vered from between clenched teeth. ”Wed her, and kill her as soon as the properties are secured in your name.”
Lucien bowed his head, burying his lips in the arched curve of her throat. Her groan sent his arm curling around her waist, and the hand that had been teasing the bloodred aureole of her breast left the bountiful peaks to slide down into the soft, mossy juncture below. Nicolaa clutched at his upper arms for support and parted her quaking limbs wider, moaning feverishly as his fingers stretched deeply and deliciously into flesh that was all too ready to respond.
”You know how I abhor unnecessary violence,” he said sardonically, his words m.u.f.fled against a mouthful of succulent white flesh.
”I would do it,” she gasped. ”I would do it gladly. Gladly! Oh ... !” Oh ... !”
His fingers left a s.h.i.+ny wet path on her belly as they stroked upward to surround and engulf her breast again. His mouth crushed down over hers, smothering her cry of protest, the kiss as savage and mindless as the tearing fingers that scratched runnels into his skin in their haste to rid him of the short, shapeless tunic he wore. The cloth was shredded in her frenzy, but it mattered not. The hard rasp of red-gold stubble on his jaw burned her cheek and throat, but the flames were indistinguishable from the others that seared her body internally.
Running her hands beneath the torn edges of his tunic, she spread her fingers greedily over the firm planes and muscular ridges of his chest and ribs. She pushed the rent in the garment lower, baring the flat belly, the explosion of coa.r.s.e blond hairs at his groin. A final tug and the fabric fell away, leaving her hands free to grasp and adore the blooded fullness that rose up between them.
”Mon Dieu,” she cried hoa.r.s.ely. she cried hoa.r.s.ely. ”Mon Dieu ... !” ”Mon Dieu ... !”
Her mouth ravaged the taut column of his neck, the firelit expanse of his chest, the bronze discs of his nipples, and she started to slip down onto her knees, eager to wors.h.i.+p the bold, virile body. His big hands forestalled her. They grasped her b.u.t.tocks, lifting her against him, and, as he splayed his own legs wider for balance, plunged her fiercely down over the thickened spear of his flesh.
Nicolaa's head arched back. Her mouth gaped and froze around a jolt of pleasure so intense the sensation hovered somewhere between ecstasy and agony. He eased the pressure briefly, allowing her only as many moments of clarity as were necessary to wrap her arms and legs avariciously around him. Then he brought her weight slamming down again ... and again ... and the pleasure verged on pain before erupting in a thousand starbursts of unending rapture.
Her hair enveloped them in a silky black coc.o.o.n, the curls jumping to and fro to the rhythm of the damp, heated clash of their bodies. Their silhouettes were cast onto the wall behind them, two huge shadows undulating with wild abandon.
Lucien's great strength survived the first convulsive foray into oblivion, but as he felt the second building within him, he laughingly chastised Nicolaa to interrupt her own recurring climaxes until they could gain the support of the bed beneath them. Her answer was a guttural curse, her response a wave of such protracted gratification that she was drenching both of them in its effects as Lucien lowered her onto the high platform bed.
”By Christ's holy vows,” he rasped, furrowing deeply into the sleek and trembling haven once more. ”How does a man like Onfroi even begin to satisfy you?”
”He never has,” she gasped, quaking through a s.h.i.+ver of aftershocks. ”And never will. That is why I need you, my l.u.s.ty lord. And this-” She arched her head back into the linens, straining into the joy of each thrust as he plunged his flesh repeatedly into hers. ”This is why you need me as well. We should have married, you and I. All those years ago ... we should have married.”
”We would have killed each other by now,” he grunted. ”One way or another.”
”Ahh, but what a sweet death it would have been, locked together, bound together in ecstasy forever. Admit it, d.a.m.n you. Admit you have never found another woman who can satisfy you as I do!”
Lucien admitted nothing, not in so many words. His body, however, spoke eloquently, surging deeper, harder, faster; held in her pulsing grip, driven by the pa.s.sion raging through every vein, muscle, and tautened sinew.
Nicolaa's nails drew ragged red gouges on his flesh as she raked them from his shoulders to his flanks. She levered her hips higher, and watched his handsome face contort in the firelight. Spasms wracked his body, rendering him as helpless and vulnerable as a babe in arms and she knew she could have stabbed a dagger into his heart at that moment and he would not have been aware of the threat. She could have slashed his throat or signaled to someone concealed in the shadows to attack him from behind, and he would not have suspected the danger until it was too late.
He should not take me for granted, she thought darkly. Nor should he doubt for a moment that I would hesitate to kill-as I have done before-in order to get what I desire most in life. A nubile young bride keening her pleasure beneath him, she most certainly did not desire. She knew full well a steady stream of girls, women, wenches, and wh.o.r.es frequented his sleeping couch, but never, not once had he ever contemplated marriage. Not even when the dower lands of a proposed match could have doubled or trebbled his present wealth. So why this one?
Nicolaa had had seen the widow De Briscourt. Tiny as a bird, delicate as a blush, as blonde and dewy with youth as the early morning sunlight. seen the widow De Briscourt. Tiny as a bird, delicate as a blush, as blonde and dewy with youth as the early morning sunlight.
What if Lucien saw her and ... and ...?
The moan that welcomed the panting, drained ma.s.s of spent ecstasy back into her arms was not entirely feigned. She held him and combed her fingers through his damp blond locks, savouring every last s.h.i.+ver and shudder that racked the mighty body.
Nicolaa was not going to lose him again. Not this time. She had been patient all these years, tolerant of the need for discretion and caution. But there was no one now who would dare point a finger at the Baron de Gournay and remind him his father had been branded a traitor, his brother slain as a murderer. The last of his line, he had succeeded in overcoming the taint of both tragedies. He was Richard's trusted ally and Prince John's confidant; the time for patience was rapidly drawing to an end. She would have her great golden warlord. She would live at Bloodmoor Keep as its mistress, and she would remove without qualm anything or anyone who stood in her way!
4.