Awakening—A Medieval Romance (The Gresham Chronicles) Read online

  She watched as he frowned into his cup and wondered as to his thoughts.

  “You have great trust in the King.”

  “And you are saying you do not? You are on dangerous ground.”

  He looked at her again, his eyes steady with certainty. “We all live our lives on dangerous ground. There is no such thing as safety.”

  She swallowed. It could not be so.

  “Maybe not. But we have to try to make our lives as safe as possible. I have to trust the King because he holds my life in his hands.”

  “’Tis not enough reason to trust, my Lady Angelique. You were ever wont to trust the wrong person.”

  “I trusted you.” She sat back against her chair, suddenly needing its support. “Was that wrong?”

  “You trusted me to give you something I could not give.”

  She shrugged. “A woman has little choice in the matter of whom to trust. Besides this time, the trust is bought—always the more reliable method.”

  He leaned forward to her. “What the King wants, the King gets. You are too valuable to him. He will sell you to the highest bidder, whether for money or power. And he’s hungry for both.”

  She shook her head, with a deep certitude. “So you are suggesting I marry you to prevent a marriage arranged by the King? He would never approve it. Besides I shall never again marry. I am my own woman now. I have my independence. Or will have. The King has agreed to it, provided I give him his price.”

  He rubbed his eyes, suddenly looking weary. She could tell that he didn’t believe the King would grant her freedom. He had to be wrong. But she couldn’t ask him. She couldn’t bear knowing her plans had failed.

  “So tell me what you’ve been doing. Last time I saw you, you were leaving for France.”

  “There is little more to be said.”

  “But what of the battles you fought beside the King? There is nothing to be said about them?”

  “Nothing I wish to say.”

  “You used to talk of nothing else but your desire to see other lands, to test yourself against others at war.”

  “I was young and knew no better. Now I do. There was too much death, too much darkness.”

  “But you prospered.”

  “Aye, I prospered. I did well enough so that I never have to return. And, God willing, I never shall.”

  She frowned. “You seem to have everything worked out.”

  “That depends. And not upon God.” He leant forward and took her hands. She tried to keep a cool head but was aware of every pressure, every slide of his fingers against hers. “Sweet Jesus, Angel, do you know how long I’ve imagined this moment?” Her mouth was dry as she tried to form the words.

  Yes, she did. For it had been the same with her. But she could say nothing. For whatever went on in her imagination had little connection with the harsh reality of life. And never would. She shook her head.

  “No? I’ve been imagining this moment since the last time I saw you, on your wedding day.” He shook his head at the memory. “You looked so beautiful.”

  “You were not there. I did not see you.”

  “I was there, watching. I needed to see with my own eyes that you were married and unobtainable. And you were; you’d moved beyond me. I wondered how I ever had the courage to kiss you, to hold you.”

  The flickering flames of the fire suddenly seemed too potent as a wave of heat swept through her body. She could feel his lips upon hers, could feel the strength of his arms pulling her tight against his aroused body as if it were yesterday.

  “Seven years seems to have turned your memory to pulp. It was I, Sir Guy, who kissed you. I waited until you were alone in the stables. ‘Twas I who slipped my hands around you and forced you to press your body to mine. ‘Twas I who reached up and pulled your head to mine so I could taste your lips.” She watched with satisfaction at the corresponding heat that lit his face at her words. “Trust a man to turn his memory to his advantage.”

  “A forward lady, who always got what she wanted. I remember well, no matter what you say.” His voice was roughened, like the German Sea when deep currents swirl beneath, stippling its surface.

  She looked down, as the subsequent memories clouded her mind. “Sometimes I got what I didn’t want. Marriage for instance. I never wanted that. I couldn’t believe father had won and I was being wed.”

  “You always knew he had to win. You had no choice. Not then, and not now.”

  She shook her head. “Times change. My father is dead—his land divided between me and my sisters—and my husband is dead. The death of these two men has brought me power.”

  He shook his head with a sadness in his eyes that made her uncomfortable. But then his eyes warmed again as they roamed her face: from her hair, to her eyes, cheeks and neck and lower. She felt her lips part at the boldness of his look and her face and body settle in some instinctive stasis by the sudden return of his gaze to her eyes.

  “Some things never change. Like you. You’re still as beautiful as ever.”

  Suddenly instead of wanting to keep her distance, she wanted him near, she wanted him to see her for what she’d become. “Come, look closer in my eyes. Is that what you really see? Because it’s not what I feel.”

  She took his hand and held it to her cheek, reveling in its heat, in its strong, leathery palm against her delicate skin. Her heart beat faster at the touch of his skin and heat fanned out like the ripples from a stone on a millpond. She watched him swallow as his eyes roamed her face.

  “I see you still.”

  “But—”

  “No. I see you, the real you, the one you keep hidden from the world. I see that person, unchanged since the day I first saw you.”

  He didn’t move his hand, but continued to gaze at her. Her body was aflame with a heat that pulsed and flickered. She felt tears that had lain unshed for years, press against her hot eyes as she met his gaze. A sob hitched higher in her chest.

  “No. Guy, please don’t. I’m here only for this one night and then I’ll be leaving for the north where the Barons no longer support the King. I’ll be safer there. You’re right. I don’t trust him. I don’t trust anyone. I need to go where he can’t easily reach me.”

  “So I have one night to persuade you to marry me?”

  She inhaled tightly as she felt the touch of his lips against her fingers. “So sure.”

  His smile reflected her own. They both understood each other as if the empty years didn’t stand between them.

  “Yes. One night is all I need to show you that you should marry me.”

  She hesitated for a moment. She would never be married. She wanted none of it. But she remembered the cravings of her body for this man now beside her. She felt them still as he touched her, awakening within her feelings that she must forever suppress if she were to be in control of her life. Should she? Should she submit to this one weakness, this one night? One night in which to indulge herself, to explore herself, before closing down that side of her forever?

  This was madness. “Even if you did persuade me—which you won’t—the King would never allow it. You must go now, before the high tide makes the causeway impassable.”

  She went to stand but he stopped her.

  “I’m not going. I will be with you this night if it’s the last thing I do.”

  “If the King discovers you are alone with me, it might very well be your last.”

  “I’ll risk it to show you what pleasure I can bring you.”

  “Pleasure outside marriage, not with the aim of bringing children into the world, is unholy. That is what the priests say.”

  “And you believe that?”

  “No. If the priests believe what my husband did to me was good, then they are mistaken.”

  “So give me this night together.”

  She nodded slowly. Deep down inside her, where her mind seemed to hold no sway, the words formed, sprung from her body’s needs.

  “The night is yours.”

  He le
aned forward, drawing her to him with her hands at the same time. She could no more have prevented it than stop the spring tides rolling onto the marshes. But his kiss wasn’t full of the power that she could sense in his tensed muscles. His lips brushed hers with a delicacy and restraint she had no memory of, before drawing back too soon. Her mouth rose as if to follow him.

  “You won’t regret it.” His voice was husky with desire. “Come here.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  She stepped towards him, her hands flexing by her side as she forced herself not to reach for him there and then. She tilted her face up to his, still incredulous that he stood here, in front of her after all these years.

  “I am here. What now?”

  “Remember those games we used to play?”

  She nodded. “I might have forced you to kiss me but from there it was you who took the initiative, I remember well.”

  He grinned, a slow grin that made her stomach flip with pleasure. It was the same smile of old, except the lines that bracketed his mouth and the lines that fanned out from around his eyes, were deeper in the sun-browned skin. “And how we wished we had what we have now. A chamber to ourselves.”

  She shivered as his hand drew lazily up her spine. “It was probably just as well the old chapel gave us little privacy, else who knows what might have happened.”

  “I know what would have happened. Let me show you.” He pulled her onto his lap and his fingers rose to her neck and slowly pulled her face down to his. His eyes flickered around her face, before settling on her lips. His fingers swept round her neck, and then down to her jaw, before curling under her chin. He tilted it up to meet his face and brushed his thumb over her lower lip, settling into the soft cleft at its centre. “I can still remember the taste of you. Sweet and fresh like a ripe apricot. I wonder if you taste the same.”

  Spellbound, all thought, all sanity had fled. “And you,” she dipped her head to his neck and inhaled deeply, feeling his sharp intake of breath under her hands that lay upon his chest. “You still smell the same. Like leather and fresh air. I used to dream of that. I’d wake up filled with your scent.”

  “Even though I never slept beside you?”

  She shook her head but he stilled it with his hands as his lips sought hers. They brushed gently across hers at first as if seeking to know their shape and softness. Her heart pounded sharply before settling into a quickened beat that pulsed through her body, awakening long-forgotten desires. Then his lips left hers and sought to know her jaw, her cheek, her ear before settling on her neck: breathing and tasting her as if she were a delicacy he wished to savor.

  She let her head fall back, giving him easier access to her neck and closed her eyes as sensation after sensation rippled over her skin and deeper, inside her body. She gasped for air, feeling an urgent need to prevent the dizziness that threatened to overtake her.

  His fingers drove into her hair, around her head, and brought her lips once more to his. This time she parted them under his and she felt herself relax in his arms as she melted against his body. The melting continued, somewhere deep within, as she felt the tip of his tongue meet hers in a sensuous interplay in which all their thoughts, all their feelings and all their needs were concentrated.

  His grip on her body tightened and she shifted on his lap, closer to him, her arms slowly drawing up and around his shoulders. They felt so different to her husband’s who, despite his acid tongue and free use of his leather belt, was physically slight. Guy’s muscles flexed under her touch and filled out to meet her cupped palm.

  But that wasn’t the only thing that was different. She could feel him rigid beneath her bottom. She stilled for a moment and then shifted slightly, closer to the point that she wanted to feel him against her. Her stomach tightened in response and she gasped at the feel of him pressing intimately against her. Her body was on fire as she looked down at his face with lips parted, filled with awareness of him and her body, wanting him.

  Her hands pushed up through the rough beard, edging over his ears and into his hair. Hands cupped either side of his face, she drew him to her. The time for preliminaries was over. She knew what she wanted. She moved her mouth to his, hungry now, for all that she’d missed over the years. The kiss was deep; their tongues slid against each other as if the taste of each other created only more need, more hunger that only pressing into each other’s bodies, only intimacy could satisfy.

  His hands came around her waist and he picked her up easily in his arms. She tried to bring his head down to hers but he simply smiled.

  “And that’s lesson number one. Don’t rush.” He flicked a glance upstairs to her private bedchamber. “Besides, the solar will be more private for what I have in mind. You must wait.”

  Despite his unwillingness to rush, Angelique noticed he took the stairs to her solar three at a time.

  The dying embers of the brazier surged into life with the draft from the open door. It cast a rich light over the tapestries, making Guy’s hair appear tawny and his eyes glow under its pulsing heat. He set her to her feet, his hands lingering around her body. She was tall but he towered over her, dominating her, but in a way that made her feel powerful, not powerless.

  Reluctantly she withdrew her hands. “’Tis not so easy to wait.” Her own breath, heaving in her chest, was testament to the truth of her statement.

  “Not easy, but worth it.” His hands pulled up her loose surcote and swept it over her head.

  “It seems I’ll not have to wait long.” She smiled as his hands slid around her body and unpinned the silver brooch that held together the long slit at the neck of her kirtle. He trailed a fingertip around the outline of the low opening, watching her expression all the while. Her skin puckered under his deft touch and she gasped as his finger touched the tip of her breast. She could stand it no longer and wriggled out of her kirtle, pulling down the tight sleeves until his hands took over and drew it up and over her head before casting it aside.

  She stood, then, just in her under clothes—the fine linen clung to her full breasts and its near transparency revealed the rest of her body. She felt herself throb and moisten as his eyes strayed down the length of her body.

  His hands grazed her nipples as they moved to her shoulders where he pushed the loose gown down as far as her breasts. Suddenly Angelique panicked and clamped the shift to her breasts, stopping it from falling to the floor.

  “You think this is slow?”

  “I’ll show you fast, later. Let your shift fall, Angel.”

  He stepped back to watch. She faltered under his gaze but refused to look away and slowly moved her hands and allowed her shift to fall, leaving her naked. She was rewarded when he swallowed and the lust deepened in his eyes.

  “This seems a little unfair.”

  He raised his eyes from her breasts to her and shook his head and came close to her. “For once, Angel, you will not take charge. I shall. I didn’t once and have regretted it these seven long years. His gaze immediately lowered. “Your skin is beautiful.” The rough pad of his forefinger softly traced her jaw, neck and chest before his hand cupped her breast. “And your breasts.” Her breath shuddered from her as he put both hands under her full breasts and rubbed his thumb over her nipples. “Your breasts are more beautiful than I ever imagined. And, believe me, I’ve imagined them many times.”

  She looked at him alarmed and suddenly doubtful. “My husband used to say they weren’t the breasts of a lady, but of a coarse maid.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “No, it’s just that I didn’t know…”

  “Know this, Angel, your breasts are beautiful.” He lowered his lips and kissed the top of each one lightly and reverently in turn. “And in due course I will make you see how beautiful they are by how they make you feel.”

  He pressed hard up against her and kissed her again on the lips. The feel of his rough cloth against her soft skin was intoxicating. She felt heady with need and pushed herself against him, rubbing hard t
o regain the exquisite sensations that shimmered through her body as her nipple tightened under the abrasions of the rough wool of his surcote. Any lingering doubts evaporated under the feel of him against her, of the heat of his mouth on hers, breathing her in, her breathing him in.

  They were nothing like their kisses of old that had been innocent by comparison. The feel of his tongue sliding against hers, of the heat and strength of his clothed body pressing into hers at every point, of his hands as they swept down her back and caressed her bottom, before pulling her hard against him. Again she felt his arousal and it made her feel powerful for once in her life. She could do this because she wanted this. Above all things she wanted to know him.

  Even as they still kissed he picked her up and her legs slid around his hips as if they were coming home. He walked the few steps to the bed and gently laid her down, dropping down to his knees at the same time as he slid his hands from beneath her and found her breasts once more, his thumbs gently rubbing her nipples until they extended under his touch. She gasped under the flood of strange sensations that swept through her body, heating it and stirring it in a way she’d never imagined. She arched her back so that her breasts pushed further into his hands.

  A smile flickered through the mask of intense concentration that filled his face. His eyes were glowing as they swept over her face before his mouth found the tightened flesh where his thumbs had just been and he flicked it with his tongue: first one nipple and then the other before he dropped his head and suckled her hard. She cried out as the spiraling sensations suddenly merged, gathered and exploded in her body, her whole body trembling as he drew her more tightly in his arms, holding her until the shaking ceased.

  He withdrew and swept his hands down her body and legs, before finding the apex of curls that seemed to swell with need. He traced a finger lightly around her sex, his mouth curving into a smile at its moistness as he played with what felt like her centre. She moaned as the coiling began again and, when he dropped down his head, he lathed with his tongue the bud that was tight with sensation.