Fairest of Them All
Austyn had been a knight for ten years—long enough to know that the harmless looking sheet flapping in the breeze was not a flag of surrender, but an open declaration of war.
CHAPTER 24
Austyn took the winding steps to the tower three at a time. He briefly entertained the notion of shattering the bolt with a kick, but decided not to waste his violence on such trifles. He did allow himself the gratification of hurling the wooden bar aside and sending the door crashing open into the wall. ’Twas only then that he realized he had been fool enough to march unarmed and unarmored into his enemy’s camp.
Holly had girded her own exquisite loins with a flowing emerald cotte shot through with shimmering threads of cloth of gold. A plump ruby glimmered like a teardrop of blood in the pale hollow of her throat. A diamond-studded pomander ball dangled from the woven girdle resting on her slim hips. She had cast a net of thinly beaten gold over her lustrous curls, but they resisted capture, preferring to coil and frolic in saucy rebellion.
She stood before the window, so beautiful and brimming with grace that it was all Austyn could do to keep from falling to his knees at her feet and surrendering his heart and soul to her dominion.
Her impeccable poise made him painfully conscious of his own sweat-dampened tunic and disheveled locks. With his fists clenched and his chest heaving with thwarted fury, he must appear little more than a savage to her. He’d certainly done nothing to supplant that notion last night. She probably thought all Welshmen rutted their wives like stags mounting a doe in season.
Both angered and shamed by his lack, Austyn averted his gaze from her, taking in the slender beeswax tapers, the feast spread for two on a linen-draped table before the hearth, the round tub emitting enticing little curlicues of steam over its rim, the delicate harp propped against a nest of pillows on the floor.
The opulent bed, its pristine sheets and sable coverlet folded back in brazen invitation.
His eyes narrowed as he realized his wife must have enlisted some very powerful allies indeed. ’Twas as if his possession had somehow elevated her from princess to queen and she was demonstrating no qualms whatsoever about ruling his castle from a locked tower.
“Good evening, sir,” she said, her voice as melodious as a hymn. “I’ve taken the liberty of having supper prepared and a bath drawn for you.”
Austyn could not help but think how he might have welcomed such tender attentions from the wife he had once believed Holly to be. “I’m not hungry,” he growled. He could hardly claim not to be dirty with the same conviction.
“A pity. I had Winifred prepare all of your favorites. Not a pickled lamprey in sight. I wanted to assure you that your efforts to please me did not go unappreciated.” At first Austyn thought the minx bold enough to remind him that he had made little effort to please her during his last visit, seeking only his own crude satisfaction, but her beatific expression lacked any trace of cunning. “After all, you were kind enough to free Nathanael and send Elspeth to spend the day with me.”
He pointed a finger skyward. “That wouldn’t be the same Elspeth I just saw cavorting about the ramparts.”
A maddening smile played around Holly’s lips. She glided to the table and seated herself, the pomander ball jingling against her shapely thigh. “I’m surprised you didn’t have Carey draw his bow and shoot her.”
“Had I known what mischief she was about, I might have considered it.” Austyn folded himself warily into the opposite chair. “Of course, I’m sure you knew naught of her mission. As you hasten to remind me at every opportunity, you are, above all things, innocent.”
She poured mead into two goblets and handed him one, refusing to allow so much as a blush to betray her. It galled him that she could still look as pure and serene as a violet-eyed Madonna. “Not this time, I fear. A confession is forthcoming and since you’ve sent my priest away, I am thrust into the unenviable position of casting myself upon your mercy.”
He arched his eyebrow in a skeptical invitation to proceed.
She took a dainty sip of the mead. “It has occurred to me, sir, that you might attempt to rid yourself of me by having our marriage annulled and sending me back to my papa in disgrace.”
Austyn caught himself staring as her luscious tongue darted out to dash a golden drop of mead from her lower lip. “Why would I do that? So you can gather more hearts to break?”
She shot him a reproachful look from beneath lashes that seemed to be growing even as he watched, but continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “As I see it, you can accomplish such an end in one of two ways—by claiming our marriage unconsummated or by swearing that I was no virgin when I came to your bed. ’Tis why I chose that perfectly honorable, if rather barbaric, custom to display proof of my chastity to your people.”
Austyn leaned back in his chair to survey his wife through narrowed eyes. He had to admire her shrewdness, but in doing so, he discovered his horror of loving her was nearly equaled by his horror of liking her.
He twirled the stem of his goblet between two fingers. “Had I known you craved an audience, my lady, we could have invited them into our bedchamber. Then you wouldn’t have been forced to enjoy their accolades from afar.”
“I heard the cheers. ’Tis gratifying to know that not every man at Caer Gavenmore equates beauty with harlotry.”
Austyn started to protest, but knew his words would ring hollow when compared with his deeds. In truth, Holly appeared more angel than harlot. His clumsy pawings might have robbed her of her virginity, but innocence still shimmered around her like a novice’s veil. Disturbed by the image, he slammed the goblet down on the table and rose from his chair.
As Austyn paced behind her, Holly’s nape prickled. In truth, she had welcomed his decision to decline a bath, for he smelled of sunshine and freshly cut hay and all the sweet summer aromas she’d been denied for too long. She longed to nuzzle her lips against the crisp froth of hair at the throat of his tunic, to lick the salty tang of sweat from his bearded jaw.
When he strode back into her line of vision, a helpless scowl had claimed his features. “ ’Tis not that I believe you inclined to infidelity purely by virtue of your appearance. ’Tis only that I find you a … a …” He seemed to be having difficulty looking directly at her. “… a disappointment. You’re hardly the woman I bargained for as a wife.”
Holly lifted the goblet to her lips to hide how deeply his words wounded. Her entire education had been devoted to molding her into an engaging mate for her future husband. She could not help but wonder if he had found her as keen a disappointment in his bed. A treacherous lump welled in her throat.
She washed it down with a swallow of mead. “We seemed to suit well enough before you discovered my trickery.”
“That’s because I thought you were …”
“Someone else?” she gently provided.
He slammed a palm on the table, rattling the dishes. His eyes blazed with a frigid fire. “Aye! Someone else! A plain, ordinary girl who would entice no man to challenge her husband for possession of her. A lady a knight could trust the care of his people and his castle to when he was summoned to battle without being tormented every second he was away from her with visions of her succumbing to the seduction of some lusty rogue.” The sharp edge of Austyn’s voice was blunted by a yearning more piercing to Holly’s heart than all of his ranting. “A woman I’d always know would be waiting to welcome me when I returned. A devout wife and mother to my children.”
Knowing that he had examined her and found her unfit for such a virtuous task as motherhood cut Holly to the quick. ’Twas hardly the first time someone had addressed her as if she had no feelings. As if her beauty were a shell of pretty armor that somehow made her impervious to their slights. But only with Austyn did she discover how fragile that shell could be.
She rose from the chair to face him, praying he would attribute the uncommon sheen of her eyes to the flickering candlelight. “If my beauty renders me unfit to be your wife, then wha
t did you seek to make of me last night? Your paramour? Do the whores of the Gavenmore men fare any better than their wives?”
“They tend to live a hell of a lot longer.” Austyn’s restless strides carried him to the window where he stood gazing out into the deepening night. “As I see it, you should be begging me to send you back to your father. Especially after last night.”
She forced a brittle laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous, sir. I’m not some mewling child bride ready to flee back to papa because her husband chose to assert his carnal rights.”
He turned to face her. “But an annulment would grant you freedom. Freedom from this tower. Freedom from my demands.”
Holly was wise enough to know that if Austyn exiled her from his life, she would never be free of this tower. It would enclose her heart, stone by stone, until it smothered her.
She drifted toward him, cocking her head to gaze her fill, but not daring to touch. “Are your demands so unreasonable, my lord? Loyalty? Truth? Fidelity?”
“Those aren’t the demands I spoke of and you know it.” His voice was harsh, but his hands as they clasped her shoulders flirted with gentleness. “Shall I send you back to Tewksbury or would you rather remain imprisoned in this tower at the mercy of my every whim, forced to endure what my grandmother endured night after night after night?”
Holly met his desperate gaze boldly. “I am not your grandmother. Nor are you your grandfather. You may bluster and growl all you like, but I haven’t the faintest fear that you’re going to rape me. Or strangle me,” she added out of spite for the hurt his candid words had caused her.
A disbelieving bark of laughter escaped him. “Do you honestly believe if you had denied me last night, I would have begged your pardon and taken my leave?”
“Aye, ’tis exactly what I believe. Which is why I’m denying you tonight.” Her words tumbled like pebbles into a bottomless well of silence.
Austyn released her shoulders and backed away from her, as if realizing too late that he had stumbled not into an enemy camp, but into a trap. His heel came up against the edge of the harp; it collapsed with a discordant thunk.
He drove a hand through his hair as his bemused gaze raked the chamber. “Are you trying to tell me that had I partaken of your delicious supper, allowed you to recline at my feet and enchant me with a lullaby, then given you leave to strip my weary body and bathe me from head to toe with those exquisite hands of yours, you still had absolutely no intention of taking me to your bed?”
“None whatsoever.”
“Why you shameless little …” He took a menacing step toward her.
“No,” she said firmly.
He did not curb his dangerous charge until a mere inch of air sizzled between their bodies. To keep from shrinking in his shadow, Holly forced herself to remember the husband who had cradled her across his lap while he sponged her tears away. The warrior who had spared Eugene de Legget’s life when vengeance demanded he take it. The knight who had leashed his mighty strength to cup her nape in his broad palm and stolen her mouth’s virginity with nothing more than the gentle persuasion of his tongue. If she had miscalculated that man’s honor, the price would be very dear indeed.
She could almost see the unholy war being fought behind the glittering palisades of Austyn’s eyes. A war between temptation and honor. Lust and mercy. Passion and compassion.
Just when she feared his dark desires might emerge the sole victor, he stroked the backs of his fingers down her cheek with a bewitching tenderness she had thought never to feel from him again. “You’ve chosen your weapons well, woman. Now I shall choose mine.”
With that cryptic warning, he turned on his heel and left her.
When the bolt had fallen into place, Holly sank down on the window seat, trembling like a reed in the wind. Austyn might never return to her, but by proving to him that he wasn’t the monster his grandfather had been, she had at least sent him on his way with his soul intact. She touched her fingertips to her tingling cheek, wishing wistfully that she could say the same of her heart.
Sleep eluded Holly. She squirmed and tossed in a bed that seemed to have swelled to twice its normal size since she had shared it with her husband, however briefly, the night before. The feather mattress threatened to swallow her whole. The coverlet and sheets tugged at her ankles until she kicked them away. Even the flimsy chemise sought to bind her, twisting its way around her throat in a perverse noose. She finally dragged it off and cast it to the floor, preferring to sleep as she had since childhood.
But the caress of the cool night air against her naked breasts only served to remind her that she was child no more.
Sleep came to her in fitful spurts and fevered dreams. She awoke from a sojourn into wrenching loneliness to find a dark shape poised above her. Her rational mind warned her that she should be afraid, but some more primitive instinct welcomed this shadowy manifestation of her longings.
Her womb quickened with expectancy as he descended on her, a swaggering satyr—half angel, half demon—in the darkness.
He would not kiss her mouth.
This loving Austyn forged from Stardust and shadows brushed his lips against her temple, traced the delicate shell of each ear with his tongue, nibbled the curve of her jaw, then coasted lower to nuzzle his lips against the throbbing pulse in her throat. She sighed her delight.
His delectable wooing enticed her to touch him, but she curled her hands into fists, fearing that if she succumbed to the temptation, he would melt back into the mists of yearning from which she had summoned him.
A shudder of pleasure convulsed her as his cunning tongue flicked out to lash one of her nipples. She arched her back, unable to resist the accomplished devilment of his mouth. The generous globes of her breasts had been both leered at and praised, but they’d never been debauched with such reverence. He licked and nipped and teased until she’d dropped every defense, then suckled her hard and deep, coaxing a surge of hot, thick nectar from between her thighs.
He would not kiss her mouth.
He rained tender kisses on the quivering skin of her belly. His tongue delved into her navel in a sinuous swirl, as if to warn her there was no secret hollow of her body he would not brand with his touch. He did not have to use his powerful hands to urge her legs apart. At the tingling scrape of his beard against the downy skin at the inner curve of her knee, her thighs melted into acquiescence, shyly inviting him to sate his darkest appetites in a sweet, forbidden feast.
Holly would never forget the first sensuous tickle of his mustache. Her fingernails drew tiny pearls of blood from her palms as she fought the desire to curl her fingers in the coarse silk of his hair. At her soft whimper of mortification, his tongue both soothed her and maddened her, flicking her swollen flesh with devilish skill to whip her into a frenzy of incoherent pleasure, then lowering to lap gently at the bounty of his ministrations.
He would not kiss her mouth.
He drove her to the very brink of ecstasy once, twice, three times, but her choked pleas for deliverance only seemed to prolong the taut circles of his tongue. Just when she thought she would surely perish from want if he did not fill that melting hollow aching for his attention, he added his deft hands to her sensual agony, ravishing her tenderly, but with exquisite thoroughness, with his longest finger, then with his broad, spatulate thumb.
Holly writhed, desperate to wrap her arms and legs around him. Besieged by thick, throbbing waves of pleasure, she reached up and grasped the velvet ribbons dangling from the bedposts, placing herself in willing bondage to save herself from drowning in a sea of rapture. ’Twas then that he reached beneath her with his other hand and gently stroked the tip of a single finger down the fragile, cloistered valley between her buttocks.
That touch, so primal, so provocative, shuddered her to the soul. A low moan tore from her throat, so feral she did not recognize it as her own.
His voice was woven of the darkness itself, both hoarse and silken. “Would you deny me now, my lady
? Shall I beg your pardon and take my leave?”
He had ceased to touch her, but even the kiss of his breath scorched her eager flesh. She could feel the flames roiling off his artful tongue, his big, graceful fingers, as they awaited her breathless leave to probe and stroke and possess. He had chosen his weapons with the diabolical skill of a mortal enemy, but Holly still had enough faith in him to know he would abide by her wishes. If she denied him, he would abandon her without so much as a growl of protest, leaving him bereft of release and herself teetering on the precipice of some wondrous discovery.
Gripping the velvet ribbons so tightly they cut into her palms, she uttered the one choked word that would seal both of their fates.
“Stay.”
He stayed. His fingers plundered every vulnerable cleft they could reach while his mouth suckled her with devastating tenderness. Holly cried out as ecstasy pulsed through her in surge after indescribable surge.
Before the last of those shivery frissons could cease to wrack her womb, he was sliding his turgid staff past the quivering petals of her sex, stroking deep with a dreamy, deliberate cadence that bore little resemblance to what had passed between them the night before. That had been a brief, roaring conflagration; this was a slow burn that threatened to incinerate her very soul. ’Twas as if he had all night, all eternity, to claim her for his own.
He would not kiss her mouth.
His brutal tenderness made Holly want to claw at his back, to beat at his muscled shoulders with her fists. She turned her face to the pillow with a hoarse sob, helpless to do anything but lay beneath him with her legs sprawled wide and her throbbing core up-tilted for his pleasuring. Pleasure her he did, reaching to fondle and stroke the tiny nubbin sheltered by the damp nest where their bodies were joined until cry after cry of surrender was wrung from her throat. ’Twas as if he sought to turn her into the very thing he feared the most—a piteous, mewling creature ruled by her darkest, most sensual, impulses.