Red Magic (25 page)

He was in bed with her now, kissing her
through the fine muslin of her gown. "I remember some skinny red headed
brat telling me that the only husband she would ever accept was a fellow who
could ride as well as she did?"

"Don't tease! I—I—"

"Didn't you tell me it was nice when
we made love up on the mountain?" Above her he smiled, caressed. Then his
hard body was upon hers, thrusting her back into the fragrant lavender bed
linen. A practiced hand had somehow found entrance between the loose laces of
her nightgown, gone to caress her breast. At the same time, kisses fell upon
her mouth, her throat,
her
cheeks.

She began to respond and Christoph drew her
onto her side, parted her legs with his. In another moment he'd swept up the
nightgown, found the red-gold nest. As she wriggled and caught at his
wrist, fingers firmly but delicately went to work upon a tender dot of
pleasure. After the first shock, there was a softening, a yielding,
a
flowing.
Wave after wave shot through
her.
She tossed in his arms, trembling, open.

"My sweet lady..."

How different this was from what Cat had
long ago imagined, the act she'd seen in pasture and barn—a chase, a
collision—and over! The last of modesty drowning in desire, she arched against
him, her only goal to help him keep the pleasure waves crashing in.

She felt helpless, deliciously so.
Sometimes she'd protest that this was another seduction, but, ever so smoothly,
his beautiful smile mocking, he'd stop her mouth with kisses and when she was
distracted, press on again.

All her half-hearted endeavors to escape
became entangled with the thing his hand was doing, contributing ever more to
the loss of will. Beneath that fine brocade morning gown, her questing hands,
suddenly bold, learned that he was naked.

"Dear heaven. You're so
beautiful." He bent his curly head to lavish kisses upon her flat belly.
Then, with tigerish grace, he mounted.

* * *

Memories of night! That beautiful body of
his, muscles illumined by the fire as he bent over the table pouring more wine,
the way his dark curls fell over his shoulders as he carried a sparkling glass
back to the bed.

She'd cried, conquered by her own feelings,
by his skill, but he'd held her against his hard chest and caressed her,
soothed her, as tenderly as if nursing a child.

"I've lost again."

"No, silly woman," he murmured,
lips against her hair, "you've won. You're going to be both wife and
mistress, Caterina." They sipped from the same glass and caressed ever
more warmly until, somehow, she'd let him begin again.

 
Afterward
they
slept,
his arms tight around her. Once she'd been
awoken in the night by a noisy shower of sparks as he'd set a couple more logs
on the fire. The assurance as he'd come back to bed, the possessive way he'd
simply rolled her over and begun, matter-of-factly, to restart
their fire as well, till their two strong bodies were coupled in another bout
of that astonishing pleasure.

* * *

Embarrassed by what she remembered,
Caterina hid her face in the pillow.

"Oh, no," he said, turning her
over. "No more of that. All that happened last night was that I was your
husband and you were my wife. Not a feather's weight of sin in it."

He was right, but she still felt shy, so he
gathered her against his chest, let her hide her face there and contented
himself running his hands over her curves. In the safe haven of his big arms,
Caterina
lay
, her loosened red hair falling in a
fabulous cascade across the pillow.

After a time, he shifted. "I'm going
to call Goran, call for hot water and breakfast. But," he said, sitting up
to pull back the bed curtains, "It's snowing hard again. I think," he
said, turning a smile upon her, "that we shall stay right here while I
shall engage you in the study of a subject I've badly wanted to teach."

Chapter Fifteen

The news that the Graf von Hagen had taken
his lady to bed spread through the manor like wildfire. It could hardly be kept
a secret, for good as his
word,
he kept her in his
room and tended, for the first two days of the year to nothing but eating,
sleeping and making love to her. Caterina was embarrassed, but, good as his
word,
Christoph showed her that joy could be found in every
position on those instructive bed curtains. Only when the storm died down did
they finally emerge, into a world in which the old guard was even more ill at
ease than ever, although the usually reserved Herr Stocke had an almost merry
twinkle in his pale eyes.

For most of the first day of resumed
business, Christoph divided his time between Walter and Stocke, so Cat and Elsa
were left alone. In the intimacy of a shared meal, Cat whispered to her pink
faced maid that she now understood, (completely, utterly!) why sins of flesh
were committed. They spent the day doing as brides and their maids everywhere
did, blushing and whispering confidences. Elsa, of course, had been lonely, but
she had a full complement of gossip to report.

Wolves and wind howled on Heldenberg. It
was a shut in time, limited to that beaten track between the house and the
barn, but Caterina hardly felt the confinement. Her husband was occupying her
mind and her heart in a way she never would have believed it possible for a
mere man to do.

Although summer had witnessed their
marriage, the winter provided the perfect time for a most deliciously reclusive
honeymoon. Christoph was absolutely tender, absolutely adoring. Caterina
bloomed like a rose. There were no more of
those dull, tense
lord
of the manor dinners attended by the bailiff and his wife, by the
officers and Herr Stocke. Instead, in the peaceful haven of Christoph's room,
Cat would recline in her husband's lap in that big chair before the fire. With
the table pulled close, they'd nibble and drink, kiss and talk. Big Furst lay
on the Turkish carpet, looking like a black feather duster, grooming himself or
just basking by the fire, the privileged sole companion of those long evenings.

One morning near the end of February, Cat
lay in Christoph's great arms, blushing as she hadn't in weeks at what he was
whispering. The fact under discussion was that she had not used linen since
October, a non-event her worldly husband had noticed.

Although Cat couldn't really be sure, for
she often skipped months at a time, her husband was certain that their very
first night of love on the mountain had planted a seed. In the night time
privacy of his room, Christoph never neglected to lavish kisses upon the still
flat belly that might be nourishing the hoped for child.

* * *

March roared in on a sudden south wind and
with it came a good thaw. After a few days of warmth, icy torrents began to
come down, every stream that would merely trickle in summer now swollen to a
huge, rock rushing cascade. Usually Cat was excited by the first mud season
days of spring, anticipating a season of riding and new foals. This year,
however, she knew that in late March, Christoph, in company with his men, would
once again leave for Vienna.
From there he'd travel to the eastern border of the empire to do battle with
the Emperor's enemies.

Another unpleasant
thing,
and not a small one either, was that Josefa was in the house again. She had not
pleased the von Beilers, had been moody and intractable, finally insisting upon
being sent back to Heldenberg where she had arrived just a few weeks ago.

Her brother-in-law, Walter, was
furious; his wife uncertain and upset. Christoph was first puzzled and then
annoyed to see that his effort on her behalf had been, as he put it,
"scorned." Herr Walter, it was said, had promptly begun a new
correspondence with his widowed cousin. In the meantime Cat daily felt those
same sorrowful jealous eyes upon her, could see the desperate, hungry way the
Josefa watched her husband.

"Something is going to have to be done
about Josefa. To have her moping and brooding around here is unbearable. And
Goran told me that he caught her in your room just before dinner today."

"I know," Christoph replied.
"But don't worry. She is to go to her cousin just before I leave."

"To be
married?"

"For the present she is only to keep
house. It seems that even this ardent gentleman has now cooled. He has heard tales
about her odd behavior, tales that I think traveled from the von
Beiler's."

"She really is terribly unhappy,"
Cat said. "Every time she looks at me it is plain how much she dislikes
me, yet all I can feel now is pity. She seems to be even more obsessed than she
was before she went away."

"All the more reason
for her to leave.
I had hoped that at von
Beiler's she'd be able to let all that foolishness
go
.
Their household is so big and always lively. Even Frau Walter, who I'm
beginning to think encouraged this nonsense, is at her wit's end and has let
her know it, so perhaps she will take her situation seriously."

"Christoph," Caterina said.
"Tell me how it was with you and Josefa's sister."

He stared straight at her, considering, and
then nodded, resolving to face the past. "That's where all the trouble
began, certainly. Josefa always admired Barbara."

"Why didn't you just marry
Barbara?" It was a question she'd been pondering for months. Christoph was
an only child. And Barbara had borne him those two fine boys. Whether or not
Cat would do so was a perfect unknown. Not only the von Velsen patrimony, but
that of the von Hagen's was at stake in their marriage. Until now it had been
easy enough to play haughty noblewoman and say that Barbara was "not of
equal quality," that there had never been any question of Christoph's
marrying her. Now that Caterina was carrying a child, she found herself
brooding on Barbara and her children more and more.

Where had his heart been in the matter?
His honor?
It was imperative to understand. "For
several years that was what I wanted to do, but it would have been a difficult
decision. On one side were Christian and Michael, on the other the long time
promises made to your father and to Wili."

"But you knew all that when you started
the affair."

"Yes. But love is a force, as I think
you understand. Barbara and I fell in love and then had to struggle with the
consequences of acting upon it."

"I have heard that you stopped loving
her and that is why you went back to Wili."

Christoph's gaze did not waver.

"In fact, Barbara stopped loving
before I did, although I'm sure Frau Walter could argue the point."

"And I have heard it said," Cat
drew a deep breath and went on, using the hearsay she had gathered, "that
you often quarreled."

"Couples quarrel. I had my notions,
she had hers."

"It has also been said—" Cat,
despite knowing she was treading on thin ice, continued, "that Barbara was
a sensible woman and that she found another man and got on with her life when
it became clear that she had no hope of persuading you to marry her."

"Caterina, I think Barbara grew up
before I did. I was selfish, content to go on not making up my mind. Why should
I? I was having my cake and eating it too. She made my mind up for me. Someday
perhaps," he said, "you will meet her. She is a great lady."

Cat thought this over. Then she said,
"How could she ever stop fighting to make her sons legitimate?"

"Even the best mothers sometimes think
of themselves. Barbara followed her happiness. As to the boys' legitimacy, she
knew from the day they were born that no matter whatever happened between the
two of us, I would never let them suffer."

Cat had subsided into a chair, boyishly
drew up her legs under her skirts and wrapped her arms around them. It seemed
to help with the tension. Her husband looked down, steadily regarding her. He
didn't look happy, but neither did he look guilty.

"It's not a heroic narrative." He
said this into the ensuing pause.

Cat ran her long fingers down her braid,
soothing herself with the feel of her hair. "So she truly loved her
Captain?"

"Yes, and he risked his career to have
her. When I came here after a long absence, I was greeted by the two of them
hand in hand, asking for my permission to marry. She was already great with his
child." A rueful smile appeared at the memory.

Cat looked up with surprise. She tried to
imagine the reaction of Theo—or any other man she knew, for that matter—in a
similar situation with a trespassing underling and a pregnant mistress. All she
could come up with was—murder!

"To do that they certainly must have
trusted you."

"I was angry at first. I felt a fool.
And I was."

"Why didn't you marry Wili right after
that?

"It would have been the sensible thing
to do, but my nearly perfect record of folly hasn't been marred by much."
He carefully reached down to catch her hand and press the fingers. "Those
days are over, Caterina. I should be punished for my past, but instead I have
been given you."