Claudia Dain (15 page)

She would accept no such intimacy from Ulrich, not today. Today was for Edward and the winning of that wager. To put some distance between herself and Ulrich was all to the good. She could still feel that kiss in memory, and memory was too strong.

"And how would you know, my lord Ulrich?" she said. "You never have heard praise from my lips, and certainly I have never petted you."

The girls tittered with cooing laughter and looked at Ulrich, to see what he would do. Would he strike, or would he settle under the slap of her hand? She did not know; she could not read his eyes, though his gaze held her own, a bolt of blue that met hers with unwavering regard.

If he thought to make her cower in girlish disquiet, he did not know the legend of le Gel at all.

"Never petted?" Ulrich said. "Aye, mayhap that is so. But praise? Aye, that you have done, lady. When I took you in my mouth, your skin soft under my teeth, I heard your praise in the moaning cry you let slip past your lips. By my touch, lady, there was praise for me in that."

That kiss again. That stolen, torrid kiss. That kiss that was all of devouring and none of chivalry. That kiss had touched her where she would not be touched, and worse, he seemed to know it.

"If that was praise, you understand little of it, having been praised so seldom in your life," she countered.

"Of this brand of praising," he said without blinking, "I have a great store of knowledge and experience. You are not the first to moan beneath my kiss."

By the saints, this was battle as she had not fought it before. He spoke too hard and too true, all courtly phrases thrown from him like a broken sword. How that she had pushed him to this and so quick? This game was harder to win, yet she would. She always would. The legend of Juliane must stand.

She took a step nearer to Ulrich, accepting his challenge, motioning Maud away with a slight flutter of her hand. Maud would have rescued her from this attack with a look, but the day had long since passed when Juliane le Gel needed rescuing.

"If that is courtly love, then I am not surprised the women of your past have moaned in outrage and in—"

"Fear?" Ulrich said, interrupting her with a hard smile.

"Loathing," she said. "I cannot speak of fear since I know not the state, and certainly not at the hands of any man."

"Is this the talk of courtly love?" Lunete whispered to the room in general. The words drifted up to the high ceiling of the church, empty now of all but those who battled and those who had wagered on the outcome.

"Nay," Juliane answered, still holding Ulrich's hard, blue gaze with her own. "'Tis not, Lunete, but this is the game as Ulrich of Caen plays it, and I will not withdraw from any fight."

"I would not fight you, lady," Ulrich said, taking a step nearer to her. They were but a handspan apart and he towered over her; she lifted her head and faced him down, her posture easy and defiant. Confident. Arrogant. "I only want"—he dropped his voice to a seductive whisper—"I only want to win you."

"I cannot be won," she said, feeling the heat of him and enclosing herself in chill, sending him the message of her ice. "I play to win what
I
want, my lord. What you want matters not at all."

"Hard words," he said, smiling, unafraid and undeterred.

"Hard meaning," she countered, smiling back at him.

"And so the battle is to make you want what I want."

"It cannot be done."

He leaned down and ran a fingertip over her cheek and whispered for her ears alone, "It shall be done."

A shiver, a shiver of cold chill, ran from where he touched her down her spine and raised the hair upon her arms in foreboding.

Empty, meaningless foreboding. It
could not
be done.

"Is this the same wager as before?" William asked, looking up at Ulrich.

Ulrich smiled once more and then drew back a pace from Juliane; he turned his gaze upon William, standing small and dark in that press of bodies.

"A man does not speak of such in front of ladies, boy," he said to his squire. "The rigors of chivalry do not allow it."

"Nay, not the speaking, only the doing of it," Juliane said, taking a full breath and realizing that it had been many moments since she had. Her breath had all been caught up in her throat.

Ulrich shrugged in easy humor. "I do not make the rules of the world, lady, I only find my way as best I can in the role given me. Of my soul, little else is required."

"Then
is
this the same wager as before?" Lunete asked, looking briefly at William as she spoke.

"I will not speak of wagers when I speak of Juliane," Ulrich said, looking her over with a possessive gaze. Possessive? Where and when had he claimed that right? "Of Juliane there should be only words of love and unending devotion."

"I would rather hear of wagers," Juliane said, interrupting what she was certain was the first note in a speech on her beauty and her worth. "I have some interest in that.

"I find this talk of wagers most unchivalrous," Maud said sternly, making her presence known. "It does your reputation none but ill, my dear, to haggle so with strangers within our walls," she said, tossing a quick and sharp glance toward the men. "Come, the day awaits, and it should be better spent than in this common display of baseborn manners."

And so she had been rescued after all. Indeed, she had been in some small need of it. Worse yet, Ulrich seemed to know that she had just been delivered out of his hand and his will, for he smiled most cheerfully as she followed Maud out of the church.

In all the fuss, she had forgotten about poor Edward and the wager there.

Which had been Ulrich's intent.

* * *

"She wants you for some cause," Ulrich said when the men were alone in the church.

"You do not think she could want me for myself?" Edward said.

"'Tis not the time to jest, Edward," Roger said. "There is a new-made bargain on the table."

"So there
is
a new wager? This is not more of the old one?" William asked.

"I think there are many wagers in this place and we are more and more a part of them," Ulrich said.

"I
knew
I liked it here," Roger said, nodding his head in general good cheer.

"She made straight for you, first with her eyes and then with her sweet words of praise for the color of your tunic," Ulrich said.

"It was my tunic first," Roger said.

"But you lost it in a wager," William said. "That is what you said."

"And so I did, but now I wonder if I should have wagered my cloak instead. 'Tis older than the tunic and of not so flattering a color," Roger said.

"I think you put too much upon your tunic," Edward said. "I think it was that the lady was drawn to
me;
she used the tunic only as a lure to draw me into speech with her."

They were tormenting Ulrich without much mercy, though he expected none. They did not want to lose this wager they had struck over the lovely Juliane. They were certainly not going to help him win his wager. Nay, they would strike to draw blood at any turn, finding their fortune where they could. But they would not find it in this. Juliane was on the run, and Edward was both her quarry and her place to put in to, a hiding place where Ulrich could not touch her.

But there was no such place.

For herself, she was enough to draw any man to her.

For her legend and the wager that rested upon it, she was enough to keep him near.

For the lure her father dangled before his eyes, she was more again than any woman he had yet to know.

He played hard for her, doing now what he had sworn never to do: win her will to his, so that her heart melted into his desire, her body readied to receive him. Had he not vowed to her father just hours ago that this path he would not take?

Aye, he had, but he would not lose her. His want and his need were too strong to play by the rules in a game he had wearied of long ago. He would not force her, nay, not that. He had not fallen that far.

He would not let her fly from him, and he would not let her cast about for another man to tempt and defeat with her cold beauty. Nay, Juliane was his. He would make her his and then find from her father what the worth of that winning would be.

"Stand before her in cloth of gold and she will still be mine," Ulrich said to them all.

The silence was complete. They looked at him, these brothers in arms, and they did not smile.

"This has gone beyond a simple wager," Edward said.

"Far beyond," Ulrich answered, walking swiftly out of the church.

They followed, William to the rear.

"Has she snared you, then?" Roger asked, brushing his dark brown hair back from his face. The wind was kicking up, odd bolts of unseen power to twirl in a man's cloak and lift his hair.

Had she snared him? Aye, perhaps she had. He had never known a woman like her. Bold. Seductive. Aggressive. Hard and soft at once. Compelling and resisting. Alluring and defiant. She played hard at courtly love, yet so did he. They pushed against the rules and made new boundaries, flying higher than any had gone before. But even so, it was not Juliane who had swung the lure to make him linger and wonder; it was her father.

What was it that Philip was prepared to offer? A man with a daughter who would not marry was a man with an asset wasted. An asset lost.

If Philip offered her in marriage, Ulrich would swear to any terms Philip could name. He would come to that lure. He would be tamed at a word from the lord of Stanora.

To have a wife, a landed wife, was to have power. And Ulrich wanted land power. His only course was to take a wife, but he had nothing to offer in the marriage bargaining, nothing to offer Lord Philip in any negotiations for Juliane. Nothing except his certainty that he would not fall before her cold charm, her hot seduction. And that might be all that was needed to win a woman who felled a man with cold breath and hard looks, who made a legend of her refusal to be seduced.

Was there ever such a perfect pairing as this they made between the two of them? He, who had vowed to never again press against a woman's virtue, and she,
who
stood against all threats to the virtue of her virginity?

But he knew nothing yet, and guesswork did not carry a man far. He had his task set before him for today: to prove to Philip and Juliane that of falling he knew naught. Of the hot joy of winning, he knew all.

"Be it said that I would and will snare her," Ulrich answered Roger as they crossed the wide and windy bailey to the tower. Prime was done. It was time to break their fast. It was time to tangle with Juliane yet again.

He had been set to harder tasks in his life, and his proving himself hard was all this task entailed. Did ever a man have more joy in his work? With that thought, he entered the dark portal of Stanora's tower gate.

* * *

"What have you said to him?" Juliane asked her father as they sat at table.

Philip shrugged and drank deeply of his wine, his blue eyes avoiding hers.

"You have struck some bargain. I can sense it," she said, staring hard at him. He was her father and lord of all, including her. Most especially her.

"Bargain?" Philip said lightly. "I made no bargain. Am I fallen to the depths of bargaining with a landless knight?"

"I do not know," Juliane said. "Have you fallen that far? To judge by Ulrich's words and way with me, I would say that he has tempted you somehow to fall that far, my lord. But I shall not fall with you."

"There is no falling in this, Juliane, no defeat," he said, throwing off his light mood and matching her dark one. "I would only get for you what you must have. I will see it done, and if bargaining be the price, then the price shall be met," Philip said, turning to face her, his wine forgotten for the moment.

"But not through me," she said stiffly.

Juliane turned from his gaze to look out upon the hall. The light was uncertain, the clouds heavy, the wind gusting hard through the wind holes high above them. And then her eyes turned to the entrance of the hall, to those broad and stately stone steps that led into the heart of Stanora, to the form of Ulrich striding up them, his smile sure and steady, his head high and his eyes bright. He was so very sure of himself of a sudden. This was more than arrogance. This was certainty that the battle was won and all that was left was the catching of his prize in his callused hands.

She was no man's prize.

"Look at him," she whispered, unable to stop watching as he made his way to the high table. His stride was long, his shoulders broad and massive with muscle, his throat a cording of lean tissue and vein; she could not turn away. Could not because in his eyes, in his blue, blue eyes, there was victory. Confident, easy victory.

And she would be no man's victory.

"Look," she said again, turning to face her father. "Do you not see it in his eyes? I know you do. You put something there, some hope, some claiming that is no part of this game between us. What have you offered him, Father? How have I failed you that you would bargain me away to an errant knight with nothing but a name for seduction? Am I to be wagered?"