LadyOfConquest:SaxonBride (28 page)

I love him,
she silently acknowledged, and met her hands at the back of his neck and held to him. “Love me,” she whispered.

She felt his hesitation over words she had not meant to speak, but he closed the space between them.

Rhiannyn thrilled to his mouth covering hers, fingers gripping her waist, hands moving to the small of her back, arms drawing her off the stool.

You go too far,
entreated the voice of all that was good and right.

I love him,
she excused herself.

As he does not love you, who will ever remind him of his brother’s death. If you are truly dear, ’tis because he desires you the same as Thomas. That is not love.

Perhaps in time
, she ventured.

You are weak, Rhiannyn of Etcheverry who deserves not the name. Better Rhiannyn the obsession of Thomas, Rhiannyn the betrayer of Edwin, Rhiannyn the downfall of Aethel, Rhiannyn the harlot of Maxen.

“Ah, nay,” she breathed and pulled her hands from around Maxen's neck.

He lifted his head, and when she met his questioning gaze, it was through tears.

“I am weak,” she whispered.

Desire-darkened eyes yielding to fiery blue, he said, “Weak?”

She gave her head a shake. “I do not wish to be, but… Perhaps it is because I am so tired.”

“Of what?”

Words she had not known were in her tumbled forth. “Of paying for goods I did not purchase nor receive. Bearing guilt for things I can no more control than night can become day at dusk. Being pulled between two peoples such that I hardly know who I am.”

He stared at her, and when her tears brimmed over, brushed them away. “I know these past years have been difficult for you.”

“Difficult?” She laughed sharply. “Terrible is what they have been. I know life cannot be as it was, that Saxon rule is over despite all to which Edwin aspires, but it seems we cannot even begin anew—that we who are innocent of all but being Saxon, shall ever by constrained by our defeat and never again be who we were.” A small sob escaped her. “I want to be Rhiannyn. Just Rhiannyn—daughter, sister, friend.”

Emotions shifting across Maxen’s face, he asked, “Betrothed as well?”

She frowned.

“Could you, would you be betrothed again, Rhiannyn? To Harwolfson?”

Edwin, whom she had cared for, but not loved. She nearly rejected the thought, but it was selfishness. “I would, providing all those lost to me were also restored and it could be the way it was before the Normans.”

“Then could you have only Harwolfson, you would not wish it? You would remain here with me?”

Wife to Edwin. Or this…

Silently, she asked the Lord to forgive her the sinful thing her answer would tell of her. “Here I would remain.”

Tension easing, Maxen said, “I give you my word I will make it better for your people when I put them back to the land and under my protection.”

She tried to smile, but the expression would not fit her lips. “I thank you.”

He lowered his gaze to her mouth as if he meant to continue what was begun, and perhaps he did, but he said, “I thank
you,
Rhiannyn.”

Before she could ask his meaning, he drew a hand up her back, pushed his fingers into her hair, and pressed her head under his chin. And held
her
.

She stiffly accepted his embrace until she became aware of his heart beneath her ear. Closing her eyes, she thrilled to the thought she was somewhere there in its beat.

One moment passed into another, lengthening like soft wool gently twisted and wound around a spindle. For the first time in what seemed never, she felt safe and dear, as if the years of heartbreak and hardship were at an end, as if something good and blessed might come of her love for this man.

“This is how we should have started,” he said.

If only they could have. But that did not mean they could not now. And was that not his intent—to replace memories of this place with better ones?

Rhiannyn drew back. “We can begin anew. At least, in this.”

He grazed a thumb across her lower lip. “So we can.”

When he did not kiss her again, she slid her hands up his chest, over his shoulders, and pushed them into the hair at his nape. It was she who put her mouth to his so she might feel what no other made her feel.

He gathered her closer, deepened the kiss, explored the curves of her neck and back.

Rhiannyn the harlot
, the voice once more condemned her.

She pushed it behind, sighed when his hands moved to her waist and up her sides.

Rhiannyn the wanton
.

She thrust the voice away, marveled that Maxen made her feel more than she had ever felt.

Rhiannyn the whore.

The ugliest of those things she was in his arms made her drop her chin to her chest. “I long to,” she said, “but though I would remain here with you, this is wrong.”

Her words returning Maxen to the prison cell out of which he had ascended, he stared at the golden hair atop Rhiannyn’s head, felt the silken strands he had wound around a hand. And knew what must be done—even though his brother’s obsession with her had been the death of him, even though Maxen had said he never would, even though it meant defying a king.

“We will make it right,” he said, “for your soul and mine.”

She lifted her face, and the confusion there seemed genuine—as if she had not maneuvered him as Lucilla had advised her to do. “How?” she asked.

“Speak vows with me.”

Her lashes fluttered. “What?”

“Unite our two peoples,
fricwebba
.”

Peace-weaver
, a Saxon woman wed to an enemy in the hope of establishing peace between two tribes.

Rhiannyn frowned. “You wish to marry me?”

“What say you?”

She searched his face, and her quivering mouth curved. “I will wed thee, Maxen.”

From some place grown distant these past weeks, he caught a whisper of dissent that sought to draw him back to the monastery and the anger and resentment bred by tidings of Thomas’s death. But he would not go there, certain where he dwelt now was more pleasing to God. As it was to him.

He eased back, took up her hands, and enclosed them in his. Having witnessed informal wedding ceremonies amongst the Saxons of his father’s lands—much like the one he and Rhiannyn had observed the night in Andredeswald when he had played monk to her soul—he began, “I, Maxen of the Penderys, lord of Etcheverry, take thee—”

She startled. “You would wed me here? This moment?”

He inclined his head. “We will make what is wrong right, and no more will any name you what you are not.”

Though she did not appear convinced, he said, “I take thee, Rhiannyn, to be my chosen one. Without sin or shame, I shall desire only thee that I might be desired by only thee. I shall possess only thee that I might be possessed by only thee.”

Her wary eyes moistened, inviting torchlight to dance across them.

“From this day forth, the first name upon my lips shall be thine, the first eyes I behold come morn shall be thine, the first sip of my wine shall be thine.”

A soft sob escaping her, she pressed her teeth into her lower lip.

Feeling his chest tighten with emotions that alarmed him for how vulnerable they made him feel, he stared into her lovely, hopeful face before continuing. “This day and all days to come, my sword and shield shall bear thy name above all others. I shall honor and cherish you through life, respecting thee, thy ways, and thy people.” He drew her hands to his mouth, kissed her fingers. “Hence, I take thee, Rhiannyn of Etcheverry, in sacred marriage, in the sight of God, to be my wife.”

She shuddered, whispered, “Maxen.”

“Your husband, do you wish it,” he said.

Smile uncertain, she began, “I take thee, Maxen Pendery, to be my one.” She raised her eyebrows, and he nodded his approval.

“Without sin, without shame, only thee shall I desire, only thee shall I possess that thee might desire and possess only me.”

Reassuringly, he drew his thumbs across the backs of her hands.

“Through day and night, through all of life, thine name shall be first upon my lips, thine eyes first upon mine. Ever shall I honor and cherish thee, ever shall I respect thee, thy ways, and…”

It did not offend when she faltered over her vow to respect his people. If in this she was truthful, it gave credence to the vows that had not struggled off her tongue. Too, after all she had endured, only a fool would believe respect for the Norman she wed should extend to all his countrymen.

“Hence,” Maxen prompted her to forego what need not be spoken.

“Hence, I take thee, Maxen Pendery, in sacred marriage, in the sight of God, to be my husband.”

Her voice trailed away, and he drew her near and sealed their vows with a kiss.

Now they were one. Or nearly so, for consummation would fully validate their marriage. But ere the middling of night, in all ways they would join. No sin, no shame, no taint upon children born of their union.

Maxen lifted his head, and the smile Rhiannyn shone upon him was more beautiful than any he had seen.

“Hold to me,” he said, and this time when she put her arms around his neck, he rose and swung her into his arms. As he did so, he swept his gaze over the cell that, for a brief time, had known the light of this memory supplanting the dark one.

Pressing Rhiannyn’s face into his chest so she would not look upon it, her last memory of it being of his face above hers as they knelt before each other exchanging vows, he carried her into the corridor.

The guard’s mouth went agape when Maxen appeared with the one who did not belong here. The man and the drunken one in the cellar would be dealt with on the morrow. They could wait. Maxen could not.

He ascended from the cellar into the hall. Not wishing Rhiannyn to suffer the curiosity of his men, he continued to hold her face against him. But there was nothing he could do to shield her from the sudden lowering of voices that rose again with coarse mutterings only a drunken man would speak in the presence of his lord.

Maxen felt Rhiannyn stiffen, but she did not attempt to lift her head, nor to clamber down from him.

He nearly ordered his men to their pallets, but the revelry would provide his bride and him with privacy that could not be had in a chamber separated from a silent hall by a screen.

It was Christophe who made Maxen falter. The youth stood quickly from before the hearth, and when he caught his brother’s regard, his eyes shone with condemnation. Of course he thought the worst of The Bloodlust Warrior of Hastings—believed his brother had decided to make Rhiannyn his leman after all. And Maxen could not fault him. But there would be time aplenty to set Christophe and the others right.

Though the hall was well illuminated, only a glimmer of light filtered through to the chamber he entered, no torches having been lit this side of the screen.

It would do for now, he decided. Beyond this night, there would be days in which to look well upon his wife’s every curve and hollow.

He set her on her feet alongside the bed, and she immediately released him.

“What they all think of me…” she breathed.

When she did not look up, he raised her chin and regretted the uncertainty in her eyes. “The night is ours,” he said. “The morrow is soon enough for them to know it is the lady of Etcheverry who shares my bed.”

She slowly nodded.

“Now, Wife”—he lifted the sash tied around her waist—“I would do this right.”

She frowned. “Is there a wrong way to do it?”

He did not think her innocence feigned, and it made him all the more determined he would not too soon yield to desires suppressed since he had committed his life to the Church.

“Indeed there is, but I vow you will not know it.” He untied the sash, dropped it to the rushes, and turned her back to his front. Drawing aside her hair, he pressed his mouth to the soft place between neck and shoulder.

Rhiannyn set her head back against his shoulder and whispered, “Is this the right way?”

He raised his head and met her gaze that, despite what she asked of him, was no longer uncertain. “But one of many,” he murmured and drew one hand up her hip to her waist and began loosening her bliaut’s laces, with the other hand, turned her face up to his.

He set his mouth upon hers.

She sighed into him.

And kiss by kiss, touch by touch, lace by lace, they gained the bed. And became one.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

His promise kept, Maxen held her against his side, and once again she listened to the beat of his heart beneath her ear. It had eased and become so steady she thought it might put her to sleep if she could but still her mind.

But no matter that silence had finally fallen over the hall, no matter that she closed her eyes and slowed her breath, her thoughts went hither and thither—from that night in the cell to this, from these past years to the years before them, from terrible loss to blessed gain.

“Blessed,” she whispered, not realizing she spoke the word until it slipped into her own ear.

She had thought him awake, but when he did not react in any way to indicate he had heard, she lightly drew her fingers over his chest.

Not for the first time this night, she recalled her mother’s warning of two years past when marriage to Edwin was imminent. She had revealed what a woman must endure on her wedding night, reassuring Rhiannyn each time thereafter would be easier and offering hope that, eventually, there would be some pleasure.

She had been wrong—at least, where her daughter was concerned. And Rhiannyn guessed it had more to do with Maxen than herself, for with what seemed great patience, he had kept his vow to know her the right way, awakening her to things heretofore a mystery. But more sweetly, he had made her feel cherished—almost loved, though he could not possibly feel such for her.

But how I love thee,
she silently spoke what she dared not say lest she scatter all that now was. Though she could admit to desiring Maxen, to reveal a love he might never return would make her ache to the point of pain. Of which Thomas would approve, for he had wished her to never again know the love of a man.