Keeper of the Dream (41 page)

Arianna pressed her face against the gilded cage. “Pretty girl,” she prompted, puckering her lips into little kisses. “Pretty girl, pretty girl.”

The bird stared back at her with unblinking black eyes. Then it cocked its colorful head and opened its big orange beak in what Arianna could have sworn was silent laughter. The cursed bird hadn’t let out so much as a squawk since Raine had bought him at the market that morning.

Arianna gave up on the talking bird that wouldn’t talk. She prowled the room, searching for something to do. She
picked up a distaff, but she’d always hated spinning, so she tossed it back down again with a scowl.

She went to the window. She could see the bent shapes of men, tiny as gnomes, digging along the top of the bluff that overlooked the town, the bluff where her husband was building his castle, a castle that—though he denied it—would most likely be used to further subjugate her people. She pressed her face against the rough wood of the window frame and squinted, trying to make out which of the men was Raine.

Several times that afternoon she had almost walked back out to the bluff, but she had already approached him once today. Now it was his turn to do the approaching, for she still had her pride. It might be tattered and in shreds, but she had it still, and she wrapped it around herself now like an old worn cloak.

Lifting her head, she turned away from the window. The ivory-backed mirror that Raine had bought for her sat on a dormant table nearby, along with the mysterious wooden box. Since he hadn’t exactly said the box was for her, Arianna was being virtuous by not opening it. But she couldn’t help rubbing her fingers across the smooth wood. The box was made of walnut, plain with no carving, but it had been sanded and oiled. She hefted it in her hand. Something rattled inside, something heavy.

She let go of the box with firm resolution and picked up the mirror. She stuck out her tongue at her own reflection, then set the mirror down again. Her eyes drifted back to the box and her fingers curled. The cursed thing was like a flea bite she couldn’t stop scratching.

She chewed on her lip. Well, she had never claimed to be a saint….

She lifted the lid off the box and … frowned. For whatever she had expected to find, it was not this. Inside, stacked in neat rows, were beautifully carved and brightly painted letters of the alphabet.

She picked the letter
A
out of the box. It was green
with a delicate pattern of diamonds and circles painted in gold gilt along the front. She couldn’t imagine what had prompted Raine to buy these. It wasn’t the sort of thing one would get for a child not yet born. A doll or a toy sword perhaps, but not a box of teaching letters. He could have bought them for her, but again that made little sense. For he knew that she could read.

The crunch of boots in the rushes brought her spinning around, the wooden
A
still clutched in her hand. Raine stood just inside the doorway. His gaze went from her face, to the letter, and back up to her face again. His eyes were opaque, flat as a pond on a windless day.

She looked into those eyes and saw the truth in one intuitive flash. “You don’t know how to read,” she said.

His mouth curled into a bitter twist. “In between shoveling the dung from my father’s stables and killing infidels for Christ, there was hardly an opportunity for me to learn.”

He came into the room, all the way up to her. He took the letter from her hand and returned it to the box. He smelled of the hot sun and dust and leather, and her heart ached for him.

She heard the echo of the words she had flung at him not so very long ago.
It is a poor knight who cannot read or write.
She thought of her own childhood, of leaning over her mother’s shoulder while they read together from a Psalter. Of sitting in a circle with her brothers, wax tablets in their laps and styluses clutched awkwardly in their hands as they practiced drawing their letters under the strict instruction of the castle priest. The Earl of Chester’s heir would have similar memories.

But not the Earl of Chester’s bastard.

“I could teach you,” she said, then instantly wanted to bite off her tongue.

He kept his head averted from her, but for once he was unable to keep all that he was thinking off his face. She
saw the struggle that he was having with his pride, in the tightness of his lips and the tenseness around his eyes.

He turned to look at her and she expected him to dismiss her offer with mockery, or even cruelty. “I would like that,” he said.

His face was inscrutable again, but not his voice. There had been a quiver there, of uncertainty, as if he half-expected her to laugh at him, or to sneer. She looked down quickly, obscuring with her lids a sudden rush of tears. He had trusted her with his pride. Of all the gifts he had given her today, she would forever cherish this one the most.

“The priest who taught us used to rap our knuckles with a stick when we made a mistake,” she said, babbling to fill the silence. She emptied the box onto the table in front of them. There were four complete sets of the alphabet and they scattered across the board with a loud clatter. “I suppose we should begin by naming the letters.”

His fingers brushed her neck, making her jump. He unpinned the brooch that fastened her coif, pushing it off her head. It landed among the letters on the table without a sound. “You’ll take this off first,” he said, his voice a little rough. “It makes you look much too prim and strict.” He threaded his fingers through her hair, pulling it down. It spilled over his arms, catching the light that poured through the window, so it shimmered like ice in the sun. “I’d be afraid that if I were to make a mistake, you’d rap my knuckles.” He smiled, and she couldn’t help the little moaning; sound that escaped from her throat.

He pushed her hair back over her shoulders, then let his hands fall to his sides. Her own hands shook as she arranged the letters in their proper order. He stood close beside her, his shoulder brushing against hers.

When she got to the letter
R
he stopped her, taking it out of her hand to stare at it. It was painted black and had a design of stars in gold gilt. A wistful look came into his eyes, the same look he had worn that morning while holding
the orange. “There was a girl …” he said. “She taught me once how to make my name.”

Arianna felt a sudden spurt of jealousy. She knew she should be glad for him, that there had been someone in his past who cared enough about him at least to teach him how to write his own name. But though he hadn’t said who this girl was, Arianna knew—she was Sybil, his lost love. The knowledge hurt. She had wanted this time to be special between them, but he’d already shared a similar moment with someone else. Someone he had once loved.

She took the wooden
R
from his hand and put it in its proper place on the table. She named all the letters for him, illustrating their various sounds and how they were used in words. The words she picked were in his language, French, even though most books and correspondence were written in Latin.

“This is a
B,
remember? Now I’ll spell something that begins with a
B.”

She glanced up to find his gaze on her mouth.
“Bouche,
” she said, her voice low and throaty, picking the French word for mouth. She started to moisten her lips, then stopped herself.
“Bouche
begins with a … with …”

His eyes had darkened and turned stormy, like thunderclouds just before the rain came, and they hadn’t left her mouth. “Spell it out for me,” he said.

She fumbled with the letters, so they kept clicking against the table. The room suddenly seemed too quiet. She could hear her own breathing. And his. He leaned so close to her, his breath disturbed strands of her hair. His lips moved and she felt them.

“Very good,” he said, as if he were the teacher.

“Baiser
is another word that begins with
B,”
she said.

The word for kiss.

He went still beside her, saying nothing; it seemed he wasn’t even breathing. “Why don’t you pick out another
B
and I’ll spell it for you,” she said, barely able to breathe herself.

His arm brushed her breasts as he reached across the table for the letter, and her nipples hardened instantly. He turned his head slightly. Now their lips were only inches apart. She willed him to kiss her.

He lowered his head, covering her mouth with his.

The kiss was ravishing in its gentleness. His tongue touched her lips, coaxing them to part, then took possession of her mouth. When at last his lips released hers, her body felt so languid and heavy she was clutching at the edge of the table for support.

She sucked in a deep, steadying breath. “Raine …”

His mouth tightened, and he backed up a step, putting space between them. “Get on with the lesson,” he said, and his voice sounded angry. Except she knew that he wanted her, she had felt it in his kiss, she could see it even now in the way his eyes were dark with the look he always got when he was hungry for her, how his face was taut with it.

She took a step so that they were close again. She leaned over, deliberately rubbing her breast against his arm as she selected more letters from the table. She saw a tiny tremor shake his chest, and she hid a smile. “See if you can tell what this word is, my lord.”

It was not a very polite word, but it was the only one she knew for the act in French. It was the first word of that God-cursed tongue her brothers had made sure to learn, and naturally, they had taught it to her.

She watched his mouth sound out the letters and then his eyes widened slightly. “You are horribly vulgar, little wife.”

“But now that you’ve mentioned it, let’s do it.”

He laughed. “I didn’t mention it, you did.”

She made her eyes go round and pointed to her chest. “Me? I haven’t said a word.”

He smiled at that. His beautiful, heartbreaking smile
… and the breath left her chest all in a rush, seeming to take her heart right along with it. She was so aware, oh so very aware of the man standing beside her, of how much she wanted him.

She leaned into him, entwined her hands around his neck, and pulled his mouth down to hers. For a moment he responded, sliding his tongue over her lips. Then his hands tightened on her shoulders and he thrust her away from him.

“Damn you, wench,” he said, his chest heaving. “If you don’t stop, I’m going to throw you down right here and now and take you among the rushes and wind up killing both you and the babe.”

The babe! That was it—he was worried about harming the babe. And her too. He was worried about her as well.

A smile blazed across her face. “We could do it on the bed.”

“Jesus.” He spun around, shoving his hand through his hair. “You aren’t
listening.
Dame Beatrix said—”

“She said to be careful. She didn’t say we must abstain altogether.”

His jaw jutted forward. “I am abstaining and this discussion is finished.”

The man, Arianna decided with a sudden spurt of anger, was behaving like a stubborn sheep that wouldn’t go over a stile. Well, there was more than one way to get over a fence.

She thrust her chin into the air. “You may abstain if you so desire, my lord, but I shall not. I will take a lover.”

She had expected him to turn instantly jealous and possessive. Instead, one black brow quirked up in an amused fashion. “You don’t have my permission to take a lover, Arianna.”

“I don’t need your permission. In Wales, if a husband denies his wife the marriage duty, she has the right to take a lover. It works both ways, of course. If a woman denies
her husband, then he may take a leman. In such circumstances, no permission is required by either party.”

“In this castle, permission is required.”

She decided to try a different tact. “You know how men get when they have not had a woman in a while ”

This time both brows went up. “Do
you?”

“Aye. I had nine brothers, after all, and so I know these things. Well, it is the same for women. Once they have known a man’s pleasuring they cannot go long without it before they become—”

“Horn-mad? Crazed with lust?” He twisted his face into a particularly lecherous leer. “When it gets real bad do you start foaming at the mouth?”

Arianna had to press her lips tightly together to keep from laughing. “This is hardly a matter for jesting, my lord. This is a serious problem affecting the delicate inner humors of the body for which there is, happily, an easy solution. I shall take a lover.”

“Taliesin!” Raine bellowed and Arianna jumped. A head ringed with long, coppery curls poked around the door jamb, and Raine went on in his flat, controlled voice. “You might as well come in and do your listening in the open.”

Taliesin sauntered in the room. He winked at Arianna, then assumed an affronted look. “My lord, you malign me. I just happened to be passing by on my way to somewhere important.”

Raine hooked his hip onto the edge of the table, bracing his weight on his hands and crossing his long legs at the ankles. “As you have no doubt just heard on your way to somewhere important, my sweet wife has decided to take a lover. You will provide one for her before the end of the week.”

Taliesin’s red brows disappeared into his hair. His eyes flashed over to Arianna. “Any particular type, my lady? Yellow hair, brown? Long of limb or short and stocky? Slender, brawny? Sharp of wit or pleasant of face?”

Raine waved an idle hand. “Bring her a selection and she’ll choose one. But be sure he is well versed in perversions of the French sort,” he added. “The Lady Arianna likes them.”

Taliesin bowed before Arianna’s suddenly flaming face. “As you command, my lady.”

She watched the squire leave the room. She could feel Raine’s eyes on her, and she strove for a look of nonchalance. Damn the man, he had seen right through her ruse, and now she had plowed herself into a corner she had no way of getting out of without appearing the fool.

“I’m gratified that you see the wisdom of this course of action, my lord husband,” she said. She dared a glance at him. She might have known his face would bear no more expression than a grave marker. “I thank you for your understanding and generosity, my lord.”