The Warrior (45 page)

She wanted nothing to spoil the languor that had stolen over her, the cocoon of numbing warmth. Nestled in his embrace, his heat at her back, his muscle-corded arms wrapped around her, she could almost pretend they were not enemies. That he was not her vengeful overlord, she his powerless hostage.

His hand on her breast, absently caressing, was soothing rather than arousing as it drifted over her skin, a mere reminder of the quivering heights of ecstasy to which he had carried her a short while ago. How strange to think she had once feared those strong warrior’s hands, when all they had done was give such pleasure. His hands could be relentless when they drove her to the peak of passion, yet they could be gentle, too.

She could not comprehend his current gentleness, though, could not fathom Ranulf in this present mood. He held her like a cherished loved one, as if she were something infinitely lovely, infinitely precious. As if his sole thought was to offer comfort.

Ariane accepted his solace thankfully. She had never dreamed it could be so wonderful to lean against someone else’s strength. Her gratitude to Ranulf for his leniency was profound; her heart felt unburdened, now that she knew her mother would be safe from his reprisals. And yet it was his unspoken compassion that fortified her, that bolstered her courage and her will to endure, that renewed her resolve to prevail after the past tumultuous weeks of adversity.

“Have you attempted to find a cure?” he asked quietly after a time.

Ariane sighed again, knowing he was thinking of her mother’s affliction. “We tried countless herbs and remedies over the years. My mother is skilled in the healing arts, and she taught me some of what she knows, but this disease is far beyond our skills. I fear it is hopeless.”

Wearily she closed her eyes. There was no known cure for leprosy. Sometimes the malady improved on its own or by God’s grace. More often, the victim’s flesh rotted away, eventually ending in death.

“We had hoped . . . prayed . . . that here in this wood, protected from worldly concerns, she might recover, but as yet there has been no improvement. The only promising sign is that her condition has not worsened. Yet my lord father . . .”

“What of your father?”

“He lost faith long ago. He became so . . . bitter after losing both his son and wife. And as the years passed, he seemed no longer to care.” Ariane hesitated, biting her lip. “How I wish that I had been born a son instead of a disappointing daughter.”

“Disappointing?”

She nodded mutely, her cheek rubbing softly against Ranulf’s arm, which pillowed her head. She had never signified much to her father, not a tithe of what his only son had meant to him. She doubted Walter was even aware of making her feel inferior for having been born female, and yet it had affected her every endeavor her life long. She had tried desperately to be a good daughter in all things, including her betrothal to Ranulf.

“I failed my father,” she said in a low voice. “Since I was not a son, I could not think to assume his demesne, not without a husband to rule for me.” Ariane gave a shallow laugh. “I could not hold his castle in his absence as he charged me to. I could not even preserve the betrothal he arranged.”

Ranulf felt a swift stab of guilt at her quiet lament, yet he did not wish to dwell on his seizure of Claredon or his repudiation of their betrothal. “It seems to me you have done well by him, within the constraints of your gender.”

“Aye, I suppose. I have striven to do my best. Yet it is a man’s world, ruled by men. I would that I were one.”

He heard the quiver of hurt and regret in her voice, a hurt that echoed keenly the feelings locked deep in his own heart. He could hear what she had not said; how she had tried to be the perfect daughter, holding herself to impossibly high standards in hopes of attracting her father’s notice.

Raising himself on one elbow, Ranulf cupped her chin and turned her face up to his. “I am glad you are not a man,
chérie.
”

His smile, soft and poignant, failed to hearten her. Seeing the look of bleakness in her eyes, Ranulf stroked the delicate line of her jaw, wishing he could ease her despair. He felt a primal, almost savage protectiveness toward her, an emotion he had never felt for any woman but her.

Just then the sinking sun descended behind the gnarled oaks that arched high over the verge of the meadow. Ariane shivered as the lengthening shadows probed the bed where they lay. Solicitously Ranulf drew an edge of the mantle over her and wrapped his arms more tightly about her.

Resting his chin lightly on her hair, he gazed unseeingly out across their quiet haven. Ariane had confided her fears for her mother, confessed to her strained relationship with her father, arousing painful memories of his own past. Like she, he knew the futility of yearning for something he could never have. As a boy, he had desperately wanted the man who was his father to look at him once, just once, without hatred, without cursing him as “devil’s spawn.” It was not even affection he coveted, just simple acknowledgment of his existence.

“I once wished,” Ranulf murmured tonelessly, “that I could be anyone but who I was . . . the adulterine whelp of a faithless wanton . . .”

His voice was low, remote, devoid of feeling, and yet Ariane could hear the quiet ache of things left unsaid. She sensed in him a loneliness even greater than her own, a bleak despair that had festered within his soul. She went still, wondering if he would say more.

The silence stretched out between them. When he did not speak, she said softly, “Tell me.”

Disengaging himself from their embrace, Ranulf drew away, rolling onto his back. Ariane felt the absence of his warmth keenly.

Her own woes forgotten, she turned toward him, gazing at his harsh, handsome face. His eyes were closed, one corded forearm resting on his forehead.

“I was no man’s son,” he said finally.

The quiet anguish in his voice made her yearn to thread her fingers through his hair and draw his head protectively to her breast. Yet she was far from certain he would accept comfort from her. Tentatively she reached up, her fingers stroking his face, tracing its harsh angles and planes. She felt him tense for an instant, but he did not reject her touch.

“You were born at Vernay?” she prompted gently.

“Aye. I never knew my lady mother. She has been dead these twenty years. I was taken from her and given into a nurse’s care at my birth.”

“That was when your father imprisoned her?”

The corners of his mouth twisted. “Who told you such?”

“Sir Payn. He said . . . your father abused you sorely when you were a child, in retribution for your mother’s sins. And . . . I have seen the scars . . . touched them.”

“Ah, yes, my scars. The sign of my purification.” His chest moved with quiet laughter, bleak and bitter. He could still recall the terror as he knelt trembling before his father, as he fought back screams of pain. “My earliest memories are of my father’s beatings. They were intended to punish my mother for her adultery, to drive the devil from me, her son.”

Beatings, Ariane thought with silent anguish, which had left cruel scars on Ranulf’s soul as well as his body.

“I thought him right to wish the devil from me.”

“No!” Ariane cried softly. “You were but a child, a defenseless innocent. A helpless pawn at the mercy of a cruel monster!”

“Aye, I was defenseless. My lordly sire was bitter and hate filled and maddened with rage.”

He stared into the fading light above her head, his eyes dry and burning, his chest and throat tight with a familiar pain. “I was sent to foster with another lord when I was six. God’s blood, how glad I was to escape my father! I hated him. I cannot count the times I wished him dead.”

“But . . . you did not kill him when the chance came.”

Ranulf’s jaw hardened reflexively as he remembered the years when he had lived and breathed for revenge, the deprivation that had fired his determination to become more powerful than his despised father.

“No, though I craved to. He refused to give me my due, casting me off like so much offal. So I pledged my sword to Henry and gained sanction to recoup what was taken from me. I fought for what should have been mine by right, and defeated my own father in combat.”

Ranulf laughed softly, humorlessly. “I pretended to feel no guilt for my revenge, but I could not escape it. I could not kill him.
I stayed my hand.
After all he had done to me, I still could not bring myself to strike the final blow.”

Ariane’s throat tightened with a fierce ache. “My father always said . . . it takes a valiant man to show mercy to his bitter enemies.”

“Valiant? Is it valiant to wish your sire dead?”

“You had good cause!”

Ariane watched Ranulf with sorrow and helpless despair, knowing that with every word he bound himself more firmly in her heart. She could only imagine what he had endured, the terrible guilt he had been made to feel for his mother’s sins, the desperate loneliness of his life as a despised outcast. Yet he had no need to tell her of the pain inside him, the helplessness, the fear; she felt them.

She was filled suddenly with such tenderness for him that she ached with it. She buried her face in his neck, her arms holding him tightly because she thought she might weep. He was a man in pain, and she only wanted to help him heal.

“You were not to blame for your mother’s sins,” she whispered hoarsely, “or your father’s madness.”

Extricating himself from her embrace, Ranulf sat up abruptly, turning his back to her. His chest felt tight and full, welling with too much emotion.

Why had he confessed his most private anguish?

Because you wanted her to understand,
a mocking voice whispered in his mind.
You wanted her to know the demons that shaped you and made you into the man you are now, hard, ruthless, devoid of softness.

He felt her slim arms encircle him, felt her cheek press softly against the naked scars of his back. He hated being touched there. He would have cast off the embrace, but he could not bring himself to refuse her warmth, her tenderness, the comfort she offered. His body rigid, he held his breath, feeling as if he might break if he moved a single muscle.

“You are not to blame!” Ariane repeated fiercely, her voice catching on a sob.

He felt the tender brush of her lips against his bare back, felt the dampness, the trickle of moisture from her eyes.
Tears.
His chest tightened unbearably. She was weeping . . . weeping for him.

He turned in her arms.

“Ariane . . .” he whispered, revealing for one unguarded moment the yearning in his soul.
I need you.

In poignant response, her lips raised to meet his, offering solace, the same exquisite tenderness he had showered on her a short while earlier, the same hunger.

Ranulf groaned, a sound of passion and surrender, an acknowledgment of his own loneliness. He felt a desperate need to accept her comfort, to bury himself in this woman and forget, just forget everything, save her. Urgently he pressed her down, fitting his naked body to hers.

With a soft gasp at his penetrating thrust, Ariane opened to him, wrapping her legs around his thighs, taking him into her body, drawing him close. He gripped her buttocks fiercely, violent in his need, yet she welcomed his frenzy. She could feel the surging power in his thrusting body, his straining muscles, feel the vulnerability and pain inside him. She held him with a fierce and primitive protectiveness, letting him use her body as a vessel for his release, while his own arched and convulsed around her, within her.

His shudders took a long time calming afterward. Ranulf buried his mouth in her hair, unwilling to face what he had done.

He felt too vulnerable, too raw, to speak. Unaccountably, he had laid his soul bare to this woman who should be his enemy. It disquieted him, the weakness he had shown.

He had meant only to comfort her, not to rail against his fate, not to let her probe his past and the darkness that had claimed his soul. He had not meant to give her such an advantage over him.

And yet, she was stroking his hair now, caressing his nape gently, as if he were a mere babe. As if she knew the devastation within him, understood what drove him.

Still, his weakness dismayed him, as did his lapse of control. Ariane had felt no pleasure in their fierce coupling, he knew. He had used her hard, as if she were no more than his possession.

“We had best return,” he muttered tersely, his voice yet hoarse from the wrenching climax he had endured.

At his abrupt change of mood, Ariane’s hand stilled in his hair.

Ranulf raised his head, gazing around him, looking anywhere but into her eyes. “I will accompany you here on the morrow, on the pretense of a lover’s tryst. Our dalliance will provide a pretext for your venturing here, to visit your lady mother. No one will question it.”

Ariane sighed inwardly. Ranulf was once again the cool, remote stranger, a stalwart warrior who had no room for softness. He regretted his gentleness, regretted opening himself to her, she knew.

And yet she took heart, if faintly. He had begun to soften toward her. He was wary of giving his love or trust to any woman, especially to her, but she had made a beginning.

Ariane rubbed the chilled skin of her arms as Ranulf rose to his feet, watching his hard, beautiful, scarred body. He was wrong, she reflected. He did possess a heart, buried somewhere beneath a terrible burden of rage and hatred.

The Black Dragon of Vernay might be a mighty warrior, but he was a lonely and vulnerable man as well . . . a man who needed her, though he did not yet know it.

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