Fairest Of Them All (21 page)

When Holly swirled her tongue to joust in kind, he captured her nape in the cup of his palm, a growl of pained delight rumbling deep in his throat He kissed her until she could not speak at all. Or breathe. Or stand without the bracing support of his arms wrapped around her lower back. Twas different from his kiss in the garden somehow. Less tentative. More possessive. Less a culmination than a prelude to a more exquisite rapture. When he finally drew away, she was clinging to him, utterly overwhelmed by the desire that had risen between them, hot and fragile.

His eyes sparkled with pure devilment, yet she could feel his massive body battling a tremor, as if the earth beneath his feet was no steadier than the earth beneath her own. ‘Tonight, my lady,” he whispered against her brow,” ‘twill be your husband who teaches you.”

With that husky vow, he brushed his lips across the bridge of her nose, then turned to go, leaving her limp, trembling, damp with wanting. It was through a haze of bliss that she saw the wisp of ebony tumble from his tunic and blow across the grass.

“Sir?” she called after him, pointing at the grass. “You dropped something.”

A sadness too brief to be reckoned passed over his face before he shook his head. “ Tis nothing of any import”

He had barely crested the hill before Holly was scrabbling through the tall grass on hands and knees. She let out a muffled whoop of triumph as her questing fingers found what they sought Twas a brooch woven of black thread so fine as to be almost gossamer. She held the curious object up to the sun, mystified.

She tugged first one thread, then another. Her heart began to pound faster as the brooch unraveled, leaving her holding what had once been a single glossy curl. A curl severed by the unsteady hand of a surly knight who had mocked its owner for her vanity, yet sought to preserve this one memento of it with a care that bordered on obsession. Holly lifted the shimmering tendril to her cheek, having nearly forgotten what it felt like to have her face caressed by such bounty.

Astonishment paralyzed her. It seemed she had been the only rival for her husband’s affections all along—Lady Holly of Tewksbury, that shallow, selfish giri who had branded him a crude barbarian because he dared to speak with a different accent from her own. She had fled his company like a frightened rabbit rather than linger in that moonlit garden and face her own desires.

Holly’s spirit soared. She could only imagine the wonder that would light Austyn’s face when she revealed that he had been wed to the woman of his dreams all these weeks. With her husband’s kiss as a pledge of his present affections and the brooch as proof of his past devotion, her heart brimmed with hope for the future. A future she simply could not wait until tonight to begin.

As she scrambled to gather her scattered flowers, her happiness overflowed in wordless melody. When her humming could no longer contain her joy, she broke into song, absently crooning the haunting ballad that had first summoned Sir Austyn of Gavenmore to her side.

Austyn marched along beside the unfinished curtain wall, struggling to convince his ravenous body that his sweet wife deserved more than a boisterous tumble among the weeds of a riverbank. She deserved a fluffy feather mattress on a luxuriant four-poster draped in pleated silk. She deserved silver goblets brimming with spiced wine to ease her maidenly shyness. She deserved scented tapers to cast flickering light over their entwined limbs.

Austyn groaned aloud. It seemed his truculent body was not to be persuaded. It clamored more insistently and with far more cunning than his besotted brain. After all, what need had husband and wife of silk and feathers when the bounty of God’s green earth was spread beneath them? He could lay her gently down upon his surcoat, sprinkle her naked flesh with fragrant petals of hyacinth and heartsease.

What need had he of wine to ease her shyness when he possessed the skill to intoxicate her with pleasure, to coax her to shed her inhibitions with nothing more than a nimble stroke of his fingertips?

And were not tapers but a pale reflection of the splendor of God’s sun? Did he dare affront the Lord himself by implying ‘twould be preferable to bed his bride in the wan glow of beeswax than partake of her innocence beneath the benevolent rays of the sun?

Austyn made an abrupt about-face, marching back toward the river.

He was nearly to the top of the hill when the first haunting notes of the melody came wafting to his ears on a jasmine-scented breeze. His steps faltered as the warm summer day went as cold and black as the deepest winter night

Holly had just tossed the last flower in her basket when a dark figure came sliding over the hill. She shaded her eyes against the sun, fearing Nathanael had hunted her down to plague her further with his proclamations of impending doom. A tremulous smile softened her lips as she recognized her husband’s imposing shoulders and mane of dark hair. It seemed he was as eager to begin their future as she was.

Her smile died as she caught a glimpse of his burning eyes, the only hint of life in a face as still as death. She took an involuntary step backward. Austyn kept coming, the lumbering grace that had once seemed so endearing now a terrible and relentless thing. She backed away from him, driven by some primitive instinct for survival. She stumbled, sliding the last few feet down the muddy bank into the shallows fringing the river.

The current sucked greedily at her skirts, yet she continued to retreat until the chill water swirled around her ankles, her calves, her trembling knees. Her cowardice did not deter him. He plunged in after her, closing the distance between them in two splashing strides. Tangling his fist in her scant hair, he jerked her head back, baring her face to his merciless scrutiny much as he had that long ago night in the garden.

Fear seized her as he searched her features. His eyes seared her tender skin, scorching away the layers of her deceit with the flame of truth. Open fury would have been preferable to his icy composure. His silence terrified her more than any bellow of rage.

“Please,” she whispered, tears welling in her eyes.

Unmoved by her entreaty, he captured her jaw and forced apart her lips. lips he had kissed only moments before with aching gentleness. His thumb penetrated her mouth, scrubbing at her chattering teeth with rough efficiency.

When he had examined the results, he freed her hair to study his other hand, finally wiping the dull film of ash coating his palm on his surcoat as if it were the vilest filth.

Holly hugged herself, trying to still the shudders that wracked her body. “Please, Austyn, I never meant to deceive you. I was going to tell you. I swear I was. If you’ll just let me explain—”

Her fractured litany was cut short as he seized her in his powerful hands and shoved her head beneath the river’s surface. Dank water rushed into her mouth and nose, strangling her hopes. Believing he intended to drown her, Holly’s soul died a tiny death, but her body refused to give up the fight She was still clawing and pummeling when he jerked her from the water.

Even as her desperate lungs struggled for air, she saw reflected in the smoldering chasm of his eyes a cap of sodden curls as black and glossy as the wing of a raven.

By the time he drew the misericorde from the chain at his waist, Holly had grown wise enough to know he had no intention of killing her. Killing her would have been quick and merciful and not a drop of mercy lingered in this man’s soul. She choked back her pleas, knowing they would be to no avail, but not even her tattered pride could staunch the tears flowing in a river of regret down her cheeks.

He shredded the padded fabric of her skirts, cutting them adrift and leaving her shivering in her thin chemise. The dagger made even quicker work of her bodice, cutting its laces to expose the crude linen of her bindings. Holly stood as rigidly as a statue while the cold blade skated over the fluttering pulse in the hollow of her throat in a mocking caress. Then with a single downward slash, Austyn—her kind, loving, patient husband—severed her bindings, baring her naked breasts to the uncompromising sunlight and the dawning hell in his gaze.

Holly’s pride crumbled. With a sob of anguish, she sought to cover herself, but Austyn caught her wrists and forced her arms apart, his eyes drinking their fill of her as if it were their sacred right Trembling with humiliation, she searched the unearthly beauty of his face for a crumb of compassion that might have escaped the ravening beast feasting on his humanity.

When her search yielded nothing, she bit back her sobs to try again. “Austyn, you must grant me the boon of an audience. Twas never my intention to anger you. Or hurt you. I sought only to—”

“Cease your babbling, woman!” he roared.

Austyn felt the tremor that wracked Holly’s body at his rebuke, but the part of him that might have felt shame for his bullying had been seared to a crisp by her betrayal. She was no better than his mother, he thought bitterly, his grandmother, all the beautiful women through the ages who had brought ruin to his family and his name.

He gazed down at the pale, exquisite globes of her breasts, struggling to fathom that she was the same creature he had once pitied for her ugliness. Her generous breasts were crowned with circles of the softest peach and tipped with ripe nipples that pebbled beneath the brutal caress of his eyes. Not in desire, he knew instinctively, but in fear.

Her chemise clung to every swell and hollow of her slender body, rendered almost sheer by the treacherous kiss of the water. He lowered his gaze, allowing it to linger with deliberate insolence on the teasing hint of shadow at the juncture of her thighs. She moaned, a soft, broken sound that enticed rather than convicted him.

Austyn tightened his grip on her wrists as he battled a mingled lust and fury so desperate it made a mockery of every constraint he’d exerted over his temper since boyhood. He wanted to drag her to the riverbank, force her to her knees in the weeds, and do things to her that a man would do to no decent woman. Things he wouldn’t even do to a whore.

But how long would it be before fury overcame his lust? How long before he fastened his hands around her fragile throat and began to crush the life from . . . ?

Austyn started as a single tear splashed the back of his hand. He lifted his gaze to Holly’s pleading eyes. Violet eyes that would soon be fringed by lush sable lashes. His wife’s eyes.

When Austyn grabbed her arm and began to drag her toward the castle, Holly had no choice but to stumble along behind him, desperately clutching the tatters of her bodice over her naked breasts. Mortification scorched her cheeks as they passed a pair of shepherd lads who could only gape at the curious sight of their master hauling a scantily garbed stranger over a break in the curtain wall.

As they approached his mother’s grave, Austyn’s steps never faltered. He dragged her right across its rocky surface, crushing the tender anemones beneath his boots.

His relentless strides carried them past other inhabitants of Caer Gavenmore, their puzzled faces nothing more than a blur to Holly until the first astounded cry went up.

“Good Lord, ‘tis Lady Holly!”

Then with the grim clarity of a nightmare, it all came into focus. Their appalled cries as they realized the exquisitely beautiful wraith stumbling along behind Austyn was indeed their mistress, their apprehensive glances at his resolute face, the chill burn of their stares on her face, her exposed body.

A withered old man shouted, “What is this dark enchantment? Mayhap she is a witch!”

They began to recoil from her after that, some in fear of her, others in fear of Austyn’s wrath. Worse than their unspoken condemnation was the bewildered hurt Holly glimpsed on Winifred’s round face. She ducked her head for the first time, shamed by her own deceit

The hounds capered after them, barking at their heels. Emrys and Carey came running from the list to seek the source of the commotion, swords in hand. Carey slid to a halt, his jaw dropping in naked shock. His father followed suit, his own ruddy face darkening with dread.

As their grim procession neared the chapel, a man slipped from its doors to plant himself firmly in their path. Holly began to mumble a spasmodic litany of curses and prayer. At first she feared Austyn would just run right over Nathanael, forcing her to trample him, too, but her husband stopped several paces away, drawing her in front of him like a shield. He slipped one arm around her waist, the mock tenderness of his embrace an affront she could hardly bear.

“Stand aside, priest,” Austyn commanded, “unless you care to hear your own last rites.”

Nathanael’s eyes were dark and hollow, but his voice rang with a conviction Holly had never heard in any of his Candlemas masses or Ascension prayers. “
Ill
not stand aside and allow you to mistreat this lady.”

“She’s no lady. She’s my wife. Or have you forgotten that you were the one who united us in unholy wedlock?”

“ Tis not I but you, sir, who seem to have forgotten your vows.” Nathanael stood his ground, staunch as always in his pious arrogance.

“You test my patience, Brother.” Austyn snarled, his arm tightening around Holly’s waist until it nearly cut off her air. “Are you truly concerned with my wife’s well-being or are you just protecting your lover?”

Holly’s was not the only gasp to go up at such blasphemy. Could Austyn truly believe such a terrible thing of her? And why not? she wondered wildly. She’d given him little enough proof of her fidelity.

Nathanael’s gaze dropped from Austyn’s face to her own. Holly’s mumbles escalated to a frantic murmur of, “Oh, God, Nathanael, don’t do it Not now. Oh, please, not now,” as she saw humility in his eyes for the first time, coupled with the dangerous knowledge of what she had always known, but denied, even to herself. The crowd held its breath in anticipation of his reply.

“She is not my lover,” he said softly.

Holly breathed a sigh of relief.

“But I do love her!”

Groaning with despair, Holly collapsed over Austyn’s arm.

“Tis God’s truth!” Nathanael shouted. “I love her! She’s bright and beautiful and talented and charming and you, Sir Austyn of Gavenmore, are not fit to lick the soles of her slippers!”