So Great A Love (21 page)

“Don't go.” He caught her shoulder, turning
her to face him. “Don't leave me. Not tonight.” His hand wound into
her hair, loosening the braid a little.

“Why not tonight?” Margaret asked. Without
objection she let him draw her closer, nor did she protest when he
took her face between his hands. He needed her company. Perhaps,
after all, she could be of help to him, could provide comfort and
friendship to his empty heart. Perhaps she could even do so without
endangering her own heart. “Why is tonight different?”

“Because of the wind.” He lifted his head,
half turning toward the windows, where wind-driven particles of ice
and snow were being flung against the glass in a constant
scourging. Arden shivered. “I cannot bear that incessant
whine.”

Margaret placed both of her hands on his
chest, though whether the gesture was intended to push him away or
to cling to him she was not sure. She only knew she needed to touch
him. The look she saw in his eyes had changed. It was no longer
fear that Margaret saw in those pale blue depths. It was anger. Not
anger at her, she realized, but anger at something else. Or
someone. Her desire to help Arden grew stronger, fed by the
intriguing fact she had just learned from him.

“We could close the shutters,” she
suggested.

“We could,” he agreed, “but the sound would
still be there, whining and howling in my head. How I hate the
wind!”

“Why is that?”

“Do not ask. I cannot speak of it.” His mouth
closed hard on the stark words.

“Then, I beg you, tell me what I can do to
help you,” she cried.

“I do not desire help,” he said. “The torture
of the sound of the wind in my ears is only one small part of my
punishment.”

“Arden, no.” Margaret rose on tiptoe and,
filled with pity, with compassion, and with another emotion that
she refused to identify to herself, she wound her arms around
Arden's neck and pulled his head down to her. It was she who
pressed her lips on his, offering the only distraction she could
think of.

“You don't know what you are doing,” he
gasped, trying to distance himself from her.

“Of course I know,” she said, and held on
when he attempted to unfasten her hands. “I am hardly an ignorant
girl.”

“But you are, Margaret. Ignorant of what I
am, of what I have done.”

“You are a man, who hates the sound of the
wind,” she whispered with her cheek against his. “Perhaps, if you
kiss me, you won't think about the wind for a while.”

“Perhaps, if I kiss you once, I won't be able
to stop kissing you.” He spoke harshly and made a movement as if he
would tear himself from her embrace.

Margaret felt the trembling start down in her
knees and work its way upward. Since that first night, when Arden
had climbed into bed with her and had lain naked beside her,
caressing her in ways she had never been touched before, Margaret
had thought too often of his hands on her. Every time she saw him,
even for a moment, fully clothed in the hall talking to Sir Wace or
Michael or one of the other men, or on those occasions when he had
kissed her, or during the evenings when he and Catherine sat over
the chess board, at all of those times in the back of Margaret's
mind the sensuous memory lingered.

She knew she was putting her religious
vocation in jeopardy for the sake of a man who might not value her
at all once his passion had been slaked. She feared the unceasing
desire he aroused in her, and she took full heed of his warnings.
Yet all of those perfectly good reasons for leaving him alone
seemed of no consequence when weighed against the fact that Arden
was in torment. He admitted as much. She could help him. She
possessed the power to ease his body, and his mind, too, if she was
able to convince him to talk about what was troubling him so
deeply.

And she wanted him. Though Margaret had never
yearned for any man before coming to Bowen Manor, she understood
that the heat curling through her lower body, the trembling in her
thighs, the tightness in her breasts and the confusion of her
thoughts were all aspects of her longing for Arden.

“Margaret?” He was looking at her as if he
would devour her.

Seeing his need written clear on his face,
Margaret put aside all reservations. Upon her husband's death she
had promised herself that never again would she submit to any man's
lust, yet she was finding it impossible to resist Arden. The
convent, her future, even her stern father, she would worry about
at some later time. In the moment when her eyes met his, all that
mattered to her was Arden and his unhappiness, and her desire to
alleviate it.

“Will you kiss me, or shall I kiss you
again?” she asked.

With a groan he gathered her closer and put
his mouth on hers. Margaret was not experienced enough to tell
whether the sound he made was a sign of delight or of pain. After a
heartbeat or two it did not matter which it was. Eagerly she opened
her mouth to him and Arden's tongue plunged into her, seeking,
searching out the most delicate, most sensitive, hottest places.
She was consumed by his kiss and she rejoiced in the heat that
flooded every part of her being.

Pulling his lips from hers Arden kissed her
forehead, her eyelids, nose, cheeks, and chin in a rush of passion
that left her trembling. His tongue seared across her throat. He
grabbed at her hips, yanking her forward until she was made
unavoidably aware of his rising hardness. She rubbed against him,
savoring the evidence of his manly strength. She wound her fingers
through his thick hair, and shuddered with the growing need that
filled her.

Arden swept her off her feet and into his
arms. His eyes glittering like shards of pale ice, he carried her
into the lord's chamber and placed her on the bed. It took him only
a moment to light a candle and latch the door. Raising herself onto
her elbows, Margaret watched him come to her.

With the charcoal brazier not yet lit, the
room was cold. Arden stripped her clothes off as quickly as he
could and tucked her between the sheets before attacking his own
clothing. She saw him naked and oddly familiar, with the flame of
the one candle throwing his sharp features into bold relief, and
the vivid scar she recalled snaking across his thigh. There were,
as she had guessed, other scars previously hidden by his shirt. And
there was the part of him that stood up so hard and ready for
her.

He lay beside her, and gathered her into his
arms, and Margaret sighed with pleasure at the sensation of his
skin against her own.

“I remember you holding me like this,” she
murmured.

“I remember, too,” he said, kissing her brow.
“How soft and sweet-scented you were that night, and how warm, when
I was so cold.”

“Touch me the way you touched me then,” she
begged. “Kiss me as you did not kiss me then.”

He did all she asked, and then he did more.
There was no part of her body he did not caress. He kissed her from
forehead to toes. He unbraided her hair and drew it over her
shoulders and breasts, using the shimmering length of it to entwine
himself until they were wrapped in each other. They lay so close
together that Margaret began to believe they were truly one
flesh.

She had not guessed at the pleasure he could
bring to her. She had only yearned for Arden's touch, and to be
near to him, and she was willing to accept the inevitable
discomfort of sexual relations, if she could provide even a brief
release from the unhappiness that held him captive.

But Arden did not merely take what she
offered. He gave to her in return, teaching her with his mouth and
his nimble hands just what a man could do for an eager woman. Lying
between her thighs, his fingers probing within the sleek, dark hair
where her legs joined, he entered a place that Margaret was amazed
to realize was hot and moist and eager for him.

His fingertips pressing and circling and
stroking a sensitive spot that she had never guessed existed, Arden
carried her to such heights that, when the full realization of what
was happening burst upon her, he lifted himself upward to catch her
astonished cries of release in his mouth. Waves of heated pleasure
washed over her and she dug her nails into Arden's shoulders,
clinging to him for shelter lest she be swept away on a gust of
passion far stronger than the wind that howled outside the manor
house. Afterward, with his fingers still stroking gently inside
her, she lay with tears of joy upon her cheeks.

Margaret understood at last that what she had
endured in her marriage bed was no more than a travesty of true
passion. Whenever Lord Pendance entered Margaret's body, he had
hurt her, for entering her promptly and seeking his own pleasure
had been all that interested him.

Arden was supplied with manly attributes far
exceeding those of Lord Pendance, and Margaret was eager to receive
him. She ached to hold him within her body, and she knew beyond any
doubt that when Arden possessed her, his hard maleness would
inflict no pain. Caught up in her first experience of womanly
passion, of delicious, languorous desire, Margaret wanted all that
Arden had to give her.

When she held up her face to him, he kissed
her with unconcealed enjoyment and considerable warmth. When she
caressed him, he returned her gentle gestures. She could see that
he wanted her, yet he evaded all of her attempts to lead him to
completion of the act that, she was certain, would result in an
outpouring of mutual, intense delight. After a time, when all of
her senses were tuned to a state of exquisite responsiveness by
Arden's romantic attentions and she was quivering with her almost
unbearable need for him, his continued reticence in this one matter
became more disturbing than ever.

“Arden?”

Margaret moved restlessly, and Arden, his
head upon her belly, gritted his teeth in the attempt to control
himself. Drowning in the many-flowered fragrance she used, and in
the far sweeter, more alluring essence of her womanhood, he wanted
only to bury himself deep inside her, to lose himself and forget
his blood guilt in Margaret's welcoming warmth. He had been a fool
to think it would be otherwise, to imagine that he could touch and
taste and give her release and not want all of her.

“Please, Arden,” Margaret whispered, “come
into me. I'm near to dying for want of you and I'm not afraid.”

“You should be afraid.” He raised his head to
look into her luminous gray eyes. He was shaking with his need,
with the fierce urging of a manliness he had for years believed was
permanently dead. His heart quaked with a different desire, and
with an unspeakable fear. “I cannot do that to you, Margaret.”

“I know you wouldn't hurt me.” She touched
his cheek. Then, apparently emboldened by what had passed between
them in the last hour, she let her hand slide slowly downward.

He caught her fingers, stopping her before
she reached her goal. He sought for a reason she would accept,
certain she would reject him utterly if she knew the truth about
him. He found an excuse in her oft-stated explanation for why she
had fled her arranged wedding.

“What will happen to you after you have
entered that convent for which you so yearn, only to discover a few
months later that your body is swelling with my child?”

“I hadn't thought of that,” Margaret
said.

“You should have thought of it. As you told
me earlier tonight, you are no green girl.” It saddened him to see
the warm light go out of her eyes, to watch as passion was replaced
by worry. He hastened to relieve her mind. “We have done nothing
this night that could possibly get you with child. In that at
least, I have been scrupulous.” He lay back against the pillow and
put his right arm over his eyes so he wouldn't have to look at her.
“I shouldn't have brought you into my room, Margaret, shouldn't
have done the things I have done to you.”

Guilt swept over him. It was not the old,
familiar sensation that he knew from long experience could never be
erased, but a newer, more complex sense of wrong-doing generated by
the way he had used Margaret to try to ease his own need for human
contact, for his desire to hold her close and ever closer, until
they were one.

It seemed Margaret did not see it that way.
She knelt on the bed, considering what he had said. Her loose hair
cascaded over her bare shoulders, strands of it falling into her
eyes. She tossed her head a little and lifted a hand to brush the
hair off her face. Her upper body shifted with the movement, and
candlelight gleamed on her softly rounded breasts.

Arden stopped breathing and held himself
perfectly still, making tight fists of his hands, knowing he should
not have removed his arm from over his eyes, because seeing her
kneeling there so close to him made him want to grab her by the
shoulders and push her down onto the sheet and attempt to take her
until she screamed out her wild joy. But he was incapable of taking
her. He knew the humiliation he would face if he acted on his
hopeless desire, and the embarrassment she would suffer as a
result.

“It was I who urged you,” she said, “I who
wanted you to take me to bed and I who am even now willing to deny
you nothing.”

“Do not offer yourself to me again,” he
whispered fiercely, trying in vain to hide his shame. Surely,
Margaret could sense it. “You do not know to whom you speak. I am
not worthy to look upon you, let alone to undress you or touch you
as I have done.”

“I think you do yourself a disservice, my
lord.” Though she was deeply puzzled by his behavior Margaret set
aside desire with a firm effort. She decided she would stay where
she was for a little while longer and take advantage of their
physical closeness to talk quietly with him. Perhaps he would say
something that would provide a clue to the strange problem that
bound him so tightly and so unhappily.