The Golden Lion (Knights of Passion Series 2) (3 page)

Much later, while he slept, Batilda rose and pulled the cloak around her once more. She found it difficult to leave him and lingered a moment, drinking in the sight of his naked body on the bed, but she knew she must go back. She must return to the harem, and try not to believe too keenly in the promises he had made her.

For many years she had hoped for rescue or escape, and for many years she’d known nothing but disappointment. But this time, and she could not help but smile, this time it felt different.  

***

“Would the Englishman really risk everything for a woman?” Garrick asked.

He was seat
ed by the window today, and the cold wind and rain outside made her shiver. She sat closer to the fire, her fur-lined cloak around her, and still she was cold.

“He was a friend of King Richard, who was also a lion heart. He’d gone on Crusade thinking he knew what he must do and who was his enemy, but
once away from the cold shores of England he found things were not so cut and dried as he’d thought. Those mystical lands wove their spell on him, and he found himself thinking thoughts and dreaming dreams that he had not imagined possible at home.”

“He wanted the woman more than he feared for his life,” Garrick said
practically, with a nod of his head. “She had cast a spell on him.”

“And h
e on her.”

Garrick
smiled and settled back against the cushions, listening to her voice as she began to tell him more of the story.

It was true
. The English lion found himself wanting the girl Batilda, even though she was one of the Sultan’s wives, and his wanting grew more and more urgent. Whenever she was able to, she took the invisible cloak and slipped out to visit him, and they lay together in his bed and enjoyed each other’s bodies until dawn, when she crept away again.

But it wasn’t enough. H
e knew that he had to have her completely. And the thought of sharing her with the Sultan made him burn with fury.

In the
usual way of the Sultan’s friendships, he soon fell out with his friend the English lion. Something to do with an imagined insult, although the lion may have caused the rift between them through his own unhappiness and jealousy, because he wanted Batilda for himself.

One day they were
friends, guests in Aghar’s lands, and the next day they were sullen enemies.

“
He has asked us to leave,” the lion said, as he lay with Batilda in his bed. She was running her finger over the scar on his eyebrow, as if she would remember it when he was gone.

She stopped and look
ed at him with wide eyes.

“I do not want to go without you,” he said.

“But if you take me with you then Aghar will follow you and kill you,” she said anxiously. “You should leave. The longer you stay here the more likely it is he will come in the night with his men and kill you all. Once you are the Sultan’s enemy you can never be safe.”

“Tell me the name of the guard who looks after the locked room where the cloak is kept,” he said.
“I will speak with him. I have a plan.”

So she told him, and also told him where the man could be found when he was outside the palace. She did not ask him what he intended to do
; she did not want to know in case the Sultan found out about their love for each other and tortured her into telling him what she knew.

And then everything went very wrong.

The Sultan sent for Batilda to spend the night with him and she refused. Now you may wonder why she refused, why she couldn’t have allowed him one more night if it meant she would then be free of him. Why she couldn’t have played her part just a little longer.

But the truth was that
Batilda loved her English lion. When the Sultan sent for her she knew she could no longer pretend. She felt if he took her then she would be betraying her lover.

So s
he was locked away in a small room, a punishment room, away from the rest of the harem. Her back was bloodied and cut from the whip that had fallen upon her again and again, to make her compliant to the Sultan’s wishes.

She could not go to the lion and she could not tell him why she
no longer visited him. Did he think she no longer loved him? That it had all been a game to her? She tormented herself with these thoughts as she lay in the dark little room, imagining she would never see him again and that this was all she had to look forward to. And as she lay there she knew that if she could not be with the lion then she truly would rather be dead.

In the meantime t
he English lion had found the guard and offered him threats and bribes to bring the cloak to him, and when he had the cloak in his hands, the lion had slipped by the men on duty at the Sultan’s palace and let his own Englishmen inside.

T
aken by surprise, the Sultan’s men were at first overwhelmed, and the fighting rampaged through the palace, the men wild with bloodlust.

From her prison
Batilda heard the shouting and sat up.

She could hear the women
in the harem screaming as the door was smashed open and then the voice of her lion shouting for her. He ran through the harem, searching for Batilda, and then he heard her crying out to him and came to the door of her prison.

There were bars and she could see him, and for a moment they stared at each other in the gloom, as if they
were each other’s heart and soul.

“The key,” she said urgently, pointing to where it hung.

He snatched it up and turned it in the lock and the door opened and she was in his arms. He held her and she refused to cry out at the pain in her back, and then he was running with her, back through the palace to the door into the courtyard.

His Englishmen
joined them and they could hear shouts behind them, angry voices, but they ran on. He had horses waiting and, lifting her onto his own, he mounted behind her and they rode off, deep into the desert.

“What then?” Garrick asked. His eyes seemed brighter now, as if the story had pierced the fog of his sickness. “Did they get away?”

She smiled and placed her finger against his lips. “I will tell you tomorrow. Sleep now.”

He wanted to argue, she could see it, but with a sigh he closed his eyes
. “He did save her though, didn’t he?” he whispered as he drifted into sleep. “The lion saved Batilda from the Sultan and the harem.”

“Yes, he saved her.”
She kissed him gently and lay down to sleep herself, huddling closer to the fire.

She was cold. She was always cold.
It was only in Garrick’s arms she was ever warm, and he was too ill to hold her as she wished. Would he ever be well again? A tear leaked out from her eye and ran down her cheek.

***

They found shelter in the desert, an abandoned mud brick building, where they stayed for the night. The sky was one wide arc of black velvet pierced with pinpoints of light. Stars, so many of them it was impossible to count them.

He’d discovered her injuries and bathed her with water they could not really spare, and when he had done she turned into his arms and kissed him.

It didn’t matter that she was hurt; the desire turned her bones to fire, and she could not be satisfied with anything less than him. But he was gentle, lifting the blanket that covered her and using his tongue on her pearl, nibbling and sucking, until she shuddered and cried out in her pleasure. And then he lay behind her, his chest to her back, his cock slipping through the slick outer lips and finding her channel. He filled her, rocking her gently, and then his hand slid over her belly to her mound and found her pearl again, already swollen from the last climax.

It didn’t matter. As soon as he touched her she forgot everything but being his, and as his cock swelled and filled her, she pushed back against him. His lips were warm against her neck, and then he turned her head so that he could find her mouth.

“You are mine now,” he said, his eyes gleaming in the starlight.

“Yes. And you are mine.”

She squeezed her muscles around him, pumping him of his seed, and he groaned as he came. A moment later she joined him, and their bodies lay slick and sated together.

The next day
their escape took them deeper into the desert, and the sun made their skins burn, but they dared not turn back. The Sultan would be waiting; he was probably following at their heels. He was a jealous and greedy man, and he would not give her up easily. So they rode on and eventually, when it almost felt as if they could go no further, they found the brilliant blue sea and a small fishing village clinging to the coast.

The
villagers gave them food and drink, and they slept on one of the house roofs with the sky all around them. Batilda was in love, and oblivious to most things, but gradually she became aware that the other Englishmen were not happy with their lion. They thought he was a fool, risking all for a woman who wasn’t even one of their own. They gave her sideways looks and muttered that she had cast a spell on him.

The lion
shrugged and pretended to laugh off their behaviour, but Batilda could tell he felt betrayed. He tried to jolly them out of their suspicion, reminding them that the villagers had said there were many ships along this shore, and one of them would surely take them across to France and from there to England.

“We will be home again,” he said to his men in a
cheerful voice. And to Batilda he added, “And you will be safe.”

So they waited and waited,
turning their heads to watch the desert in case their pursuers should find them, and then turning again to watch the sea for the ship that would take them to safety. And the days and weeks passed.

They thought they
had outrun the Sultan but they hadn’t.

Aghar
’s men came for them. They came in the dead of night, taking them by surprise, and there was a battle. The Englishmen all fought like lions, and for a time they drove the Sultan’s men back, but there were too many. The darkness was full of the clashing of blades, the cries of the wounded and the shouts of the victors. Soon the Englishmen were dying all around and the lion was the only one left.

He barricaded the
two of them into a hut and Batilda saw he was hurt badly, blood streaming from his head. She knew then that they would both die, for she refused to be returned to the Sultan if her lion was no more.

But just as all seemed lost,
Batilda remembered the invisible cloak, which they had brought with them, and she flung it over them both just as the door was smashed in. The Sultan’s men came roaring into the room and stopped, staring. They went to the window and peered out, and then they were running again, imagining that the lion and Batilda were out there somewhere, escaping toward the sea.

With the cloak she had
saved them from certain death.

T
he Sultan’s men went away and then the ship came, but by then the lion was very sick.

The journey to England was a long one
. Once they were off the ship they travelled overland much of the way, and the lion rode in a cart because he was too ill to ride. Batilda tended him as best she could. They dared not say who they really were in case friends of the Sultan found them, and Batilda pretended they were a merchant and his wife, attacked by bandits.

Garrick thought about this. His head was aching, she could tell by the way he squinted his eyes and rubbed at his temples, but
generally he seemed much better. She dared to hope that he was getting well. He’d even asked her about his horse today and spoke of going riding, but he hadn’t the strength for it, not yet.

“So did they arrive home? Did he live to see England again?”

“He did.” She smiled, and lay down beside him. “Sleep now. It is late and you are weary.”

He reached to take her hand, his fingers interlacing with hers, but he did not sleep. She could see his eyes staring up at the canopy of the bed
; even after the candle was out she could see their gleam.

For some reason her heart was beating quickly
and she felt anxious and restless. She felt as if there was a stirring in the air, as if tonight something momentous was about to happen.

“You are my wife,” he murmured in the dark, and he came up onto his elbow and looked down at her. His eyes were clear. The scar that had torn open his scalp and his cheek was healed, although the puckered skin would never be as it was. And yet, to her, he was still the handsome man she had fallen in love with.

She nodded, unable to speak for the lump in her throat, and then he bent and kissed her lips, tentatively at first and then more firmly. He reached to cup her breast where she was naked beneath the bedcovers and her nipple peaked against his palm. He made a sound in his throat of desire and need.

“Beautiful,” he whispered, and bent to r
un his tongue over her skin.

It had been so long, her body was greedy. Already she could feel her sex swelling and aching, demanding to be touched. His hand slid down to her belly and for a moment he held it there, perfectly still.