Ronan's Bride (9 page)

His hand came out and his finger traced her ankle. “He did not pleasure you, not even the wedding night?”

“He rutted. After the beating,” her tone was tight, “I was little more than a girl. He was brutal and…I want not to think of it.”

Thumb brushing he said, “Then 'tis gone. Past and dead.”

Sefare buried her face again, her voice muffled between the fur, but hearable when she said, “I want to know how to fight again. I want to feel that same confidence when I hold a weapon. Moreover, I want to find the courage I once knew, no matter what I undertake. I will not turn back to what I had to become. I’d rather die.”

Seconds passed before she felt him extend over her back, his arms holding his weight and powerful long legs outside hers. His fingers in the half gloves filtered through her hair as he held her head in his hands, kissed it, and husked, “That I can give you. Anything else…I...”

She lifted her head slightly, so that his hands fell away. His scent and heat, the sheer muscle of him, even held lightly from her, was oddly reassuring. “I know we cannot hide here forever. None of us can conceal everything for long. I realize that fate has thrown us together, not choice. I know it takes more than force and desire—to break down walls built over time. I do not ask, nor expect, beyond what you have given me. Your vows have already given me more than you realize.”

Ronan rolled from her and lay on his back beside her, his hands resting on his stomach.

The rain and storm raged, and fire crackled. Sefare turned her head and saw his eyes closed, thick lashes resting together. Easing up a bit, she could see his long musculature stretched out, the booted feet crossed, and for a moment she simply skimmed him visually, his frame longer than hers and virile in its strength, potent.

She drew her gaze to his face, the lips and chin exposed, as well as most of his nose, which was strong with flared nostrils. Her hand lifted.

“Don’t…”

His soft voice drew her gaze to his eyes again, finding he had not opened them but somehow sensed her movement.

She merely touched his lips, lightly, marking their shape with her fingertips before she drew her hand back. Sefare lowered her head and lay simply watching him, until the rain and fire; the soft silence lulled her to sleep.

* * * *

Ronan lay there a bit longer, indulging a need that surprised him. He was hard again, his sex straining and thick, scrotum tight and skin flushed. After he’d left her in the kitchens, he’d gone back to that overhang, unlaced his trousers and head back, senses full of her, mouth tinged with her flavor, he’d fisted his sex and stroked himself, then climaxed, before repairing and sliding down on his haunches, head in his hands…while he cursed every weakness that made him touch her to start with. He also mentally cursed his body, that turned to a series of hungry bands, squeezing erotic thoughts into his head, and raw hungers out of his very pores.

He had wanted females before, fantasized in the manner it took to release his seed, and the tension. But he’d never in his life felt the war of tenderness, hunger, need, those compulsions to draw more moans and cries, more trembles, from one woman’s lips. What had built from yester eve, and what built watching her on the field, seemed to explode in the storm. It took everything in him to be mindful he was covered and masked for a reason. However, nothing, once he felt her softening, could have kept him from tasting her skin, suckling and kissing. From the core of him, he’d needed to taste that nectar.

Ronan sat up, studying her in asleep, on her side, her upper torso nude, and the linen loose around her hips. He gazed at her longer, eyeing the contrast between the ermine and her white blond hair, her milk white skin. She had firm sinew under that silky and soft flesh, and was compact, her spine and legs strong, her small hands competent.

Her jaw flexed in her sleep, as if she grit her teeth, and he traced the handsome bones, aristocratic mixed with a Norse strength. Her brows and lashes were snowy, so that when her eyes opened the aqua hue was breathtaking.

Overall, he could see why men would think her the ideal, and why they would assume her soft, weak, and helpless. She was light and fair, delicate in height. However, as her climax was upon her earlier, he had felt an aggressive hunger in her. He had seen her train and fight, saw the steel in her soul when she refused to let the past rob the present, or the abuse torture her further.

Ronan got his knees and folded the edge of the fur over to cover her body, before he turned and fixed the fire. He got up and doused candles, pulled the drain in the tub, which was fixed over the hole that emptied into the latrine pipes.

Standing a moment more by the doors, his gaze took in the big bed; rich crimson hangings drawn back, warm flannel covered the mattress that plumped with down. It was tempting, inviting, yet he turned and went to his chambers, sliding in the bolt before he walked to the bed to undress.

Shirt removed, he undid his boots, shucked both boots and breeches, staring a moment at his own fire, surmising Daykin had fed it recently from the fresh log there. He went to the bed and sat on the edge absently pulling the tie from his mane before unbuckling the mask. The bed was not boxed in but was high and large, repaired from one found in a sub chamber, and cleaned. He lay back on a long plump pillow, his nude frame bronze in contrast to flannel sheets, but not pulling the quilts up as yet.

Sometime before sleep, he turned his head and eyed his armor, which gleamed, where Daykin set it, crimson with the helm, mask, gauntlets, mail and sword, on the sturdy benches, holding also plate pieces and guards. He did not fly his herald on the castle walls, as was custom. Under the circumstances. It was in the great hall below; along with the shields, he collected from those he conquered. Turning his head back, he closed his eyes knowing that emotions brought vulnerabilities to the surface. The more one attached himself to something, the greater the urge to keep it, protect it, and it soon became a part of who one was.

Deep hours found his slumber intertwined with wraiths of the past. As a fist, it gripped him, forcing the smells in his nostrils, and emblazing vivid and tormenting images, before his eyes.

* * * *

Sefare jerked awake, pushing up swiftly and yanking off the fur. For a moment, she scarcely breathed, aware the fire died down, but listening for the sound that pulled her from slumber. She heard it then, muffled as it was through the dividing doors—cries and thrashing, raw and deep, a helpless cry.

Scrambling to her feet, she seized the first thing at hand, a tunic and breeches, pulling them on; she headed for the adjoining door. It was barred to her.

Stomach tight, she heard Ronan rasping; “Did you see his head, brother, and father’s head? It’s on a pike.” Then, “Don’t, Pagan, don’t hold me up. Christ’s mercy…I’ve killed you.”

Breathing shallow, shaking, she ran for the hall entry and opened her door. Barefoot she went to Ronan’s—and came against Daykin.

“Nay, My Lady.”

“Let me in there!” She met his determined gaze, his boots planted wide and arms crossed. They could both hear the loud screams that echoed through the castle.

“Nay. I will not.”

She felt her skin crawling off from the echo of that scream. “Can’t you see he’s trapped in it? He’s...”

“I won’t let you pass. He forbade it!” The young man grit his teeth, obviously moved too, and reacting to what she could hear, but loyal.

Shooting him a hard look, she went back to her chamber, crouching down, sliding to the floor by the door that was barred. Sefare closed her eyes, head pressed hard against the wood. Her hands locked together between her knees.

Ronan’s rasps filtered dark through the wood slabs, “All that blood… ‘Tis mine… No, do not lift me, Pagan. Pagan. No! Do not challenge him. Quiet now. Hush, the guard comes. He will be done with me soon enough. Do not get yourself a beating.

Bloody buggering hell! Let him go…

Pagan? I cannot feel my back… why are you weeping, stop it! Oh, brother… do not let me cry in front of him.

“Look here! I have hid some bread. Not hungry…my guts hurt…”

Hot tears ran down her cheeks as he cried out again. The timbered bed cracked and popped, as if he bowed up. His feverish mutter and murmur chanting “Look at Pagan….don’t think….don’t feel. Ah, God’s mercy, they are not done…not done. When will it end? Mother, Faith? No…hurry, blood! No heads on their bodies…blood, my feet…sticky. Hot and burning…

Run, run Pagan, the horses come swift! Ruuuun!”

Sefare clamped her hands over her ears, her own weeping hiccupping her body as he went on and on, over and over— begging to emerge from it all, to escape and at moments… to die.

When he cried out, my face, my body…help me, ah God, pagan, we are afire! Later still, he raged, look at me, look at the monster!

When the sounds of vomiting came, Sefare shook her head, rolling her own sweating forehead against the wood, her hands clawing and willing that bar to release.

It did not.

The silence, just before dawn, left a hollow coldness. She heard the scrape as Daykin entered. Heard him say gently, “‘Tis nothing My Lord, I am merely wiping sweat from your brow.”

Sometime of his coming and going, she heard Ronan say; “My apologies, young Daykin. None should have to look upon me by obligation.”

“‘Tis nothing, My Lord. A few scars. Nothing compared to lepers and cripples in the village. Nothing at all repulsing. Here is your morning drink. I expect the Celt desires your ear, they’ve some word from the scouts, and a poacher caught.”

“I’ll meet him in the hall. Does it rain still? Cursed foul weather, eh?”

“Only a drizzle, My Lord. But there is mud and mire all about.”

After the boy left, Sefare climbed to her feet, every bone aching and feeling a pain that threaded through muscle and mind. Sefare padded to the bench and poured water from a pitcher into a bowl. She washed her face, hands trembling, stomach concave with tension. Sefare finished dressing, wearing wool trousers, soft hide boots, and a tunic of embroidered wool to her knees. She belted it and was seated by the window; shutters open to the drear of dawn, when the girl brought in her Khava and meal.

As she murmured thanks, sipped, and before eyeing the clouds, she sensed even the servants were walking extra quiet, subdued. Doubtless half the castle folk and beyond had heard his loudest cries.

Sighing heavily, Sefare noted the day breaking with no sun and heard the sounds from below; the animals, the guards cursing mud, and a mule braying stubbornly. Smoke wafted as pits were started. The ring of Isola’s hammer tinged in the distance. She arose when done, hands braced on the slab window niche, and peered past all beyond the castle wall.

Shivering Sefare murmured, “Let it stay buried, do not let Guardi come for me. Ronan….I think I need him, his healing touch…. as much as he needs me.”

Chapter Five

In the lower hall, fully dressed, masked, wearing a long leather mantle, hooded as Ualtar’s was, Ronan propped his boot sole on the hearth’s base and his hand on the mantle, Listening, as the Celt, along with two of Sefare’s knights, reported to him.

“The storm caught me in the woodman’s hut,” Sir Markus was saying. “The man I assumed was a poacher ran through the door shortly after. There we were, staring at each other. It took a moment for me to note no satchel over his shoulder for rabbits, and there was only a spyglass around his neck. One puny knife.”

“Where’d you put him?”

“I took him below,” Ualtar explained.

You found something else?” Ronan eyed him knowingly.

From inside his mantle Ualtar extracted a scrap of hide. “A crude map. Does it look anything like you understand?”

Ronan held it to the firelight, seeing the embedded dye and studying it for some moments. He murmured when done, eyeing the men. “If I had to guess, it would be other spies. A relay, of messengers.”

“Guardi,” Markus growled.

Studying the man, somewhere in his late twenties with long nut-brown hair and swarthy skin, deep hazel eyes, and a mouth showing contempt, Ronan nodded. “He was ahead of my thinking. Must have followed, sent men as soon as you fled. Likely, they were at the Melee.”

The knight sat down on the bench, the bulk of his muscle making it creak. “Though 'tis more a personal obsession than a battle for him, the family is large, the males tend to fight together.”

He flickered his gaze away and murmured, “Your pardon, My Lord, but I don’t think he’d openly pursue her, because the family was ill pleased with the choice. I do not imagine that a rebelling and non-submissive woman is what he wants either. ‘Tis more that they treat all, men, slaves, hounds and beasts, with a notion that 'tis for them to declare the fate, the living, dying, punishment, of what they own.”

“He does not own her!” Ronan snarled, ignoring Ualtar’s swift look his way.

“He feels he owes her punishment, nonetheless.”

“Let him dare!” Ronan’s fingers curled to a fist, his gray eyes icy behind the mask. “Let him come and risk it… I pray he does.”

“”He’s enraged but calculating.” The other knight shook his head. “He has waited long and sent spies. You cannot outwait him. You’d be a virtual pris…” He flushed and looked into the fire.