The Mistress of Normandy

She glared. “A fine way for a Frenchman to speak, lauding English victories.”

Fool, he said to himself, she’ll find you out even sooner if you don’t guard your tongue. “I laud not the victories, only the way in which they were won. How many arrows could a master archer let fly in the time it takes to load and discharge a cannon?”

“A hundred arrows cannot bring down a stone wall. A single gun can.”

“What good is a firearm that hides the enemy in smoke?”

“What good is an arrow in a strong wind, a bowstring saturated by rain?”

Her vehemence delighted and disturbed him. Deliberately he sidestepped the challenge. “What good is arguing with a maid too precocious for her own welfare?”

She scowled, but he held her with a look of amused affection until the corners of her mouth tipped up in a smile. “You will never defeat my logic in this, sir knight,” she stated. “I am far too quick for you—in more ways than one.” She turned and ran down a grassy slope.

Laughing, he followed her lead past great elms, old yews, giant beeches, over half-buried stones and purplish mud, until he glimpsed the sea through rows of wind-torn hedges.

His caution swept away by her capriciousness and the lithe grace of her movements, he lunged forward and caught her around the waist. Her soft gasp tickled his ear as he swung her in the air. They tumbled together into the soft grass until, with gentle force, Rand pinned her beneath him. One hand bound her delicate wrists and held them above her head, while the other tiptoed in light caresses down her rib cage until she fairly shrieked for mercy.

“Who is the quicker now, pucelle?”

She clamped her mouth shut, refusing to yield. His fingers found and tickled each rib in turn, sending little shocks of awareness through him as her form and the warmth of her flesh came alive beneath her homespun smock.

Boldly he teased the flesh of her neck, his fingers rippling beneath the dense silk of her hair. Her skin was as smooth as ivory, as lustrous as a pearl. Wildly he wondered if she could feel the simmering heat of his desire, if she knew how close he was to letting his passion devour them both.

Sudden guilt flayed him. He was betrothed to another. Yet with Lianna his vows of chastity, of chivalry, flew on the wind, beyond the reach of reason.

As of its own accord, his touch changed to searching caresses, his fingers tracing her cheeks, her shoulders, the dainty line of her collarbone. He explored her form and texture, wanting to stamp her image on his soul. She stirred, and a small whimpering sound escaped her. “Who is the quicker now?” he asked again, forcing lightness into his tone. “Who?”

“You...oh, you,” she gasped.

Immediately Rand released her wrists, but he touched her still with languorous strokes. Bringing his face very close to hers, he studied the clouds of pink color in her cheeks, the sparkle in her eyes.

“There is naught so heady,” he whispered, “as a battle won.”

“You do not play fair,” she replied breathlessly.

“Where you are concerned,” he said, “I forswear fairness.” The wind stirred the hedges, and a shadow drifted over her face, deepening the color of her eyes to opaque silver. She shifted beneath him, the slight movement bringing his every nerve to a state of burning aliveness.

“Lianna, I haven’t stopped thinking about you since the moment we met.” He touched his lips at random over her flushed and startled face. “You make me want to forget who I am, to forget there’s a world and a time beyond this moment.”

She took a deep, dreamy breath, and he caught it with his mouth, absorbing the warm sweet nectar of her lips. The times he’d held a woman in his arms were few, but had he kissed a thousand women, he knew not one of them could seize his soul as Lianna did.

She lay still, naive, accepting. Her lips felt like moist velvet as he brushed them with his own. She tasted of morning dew and mystery, as if her body held some secret just out of his reach. He burned for her, longed to unlock the person she was, to peel away the layers of her outward identity and cast them aside like petals plucked from a daisy.

Madness, he thought, feathering kisses over her brow, into her hair. Madness to indulge in this forbidden tryst. But oh, how he wanted to explore the insanity. His hand found the sweet curve of her breast. He lifted his head. She eyed him with soft inquiry. Her lips were moist, love-bruised.

“We’d best start back,” he said reluctantly.

Wistfulness darkened her eyes. “Why?”

“Because you are a funny little pucelle who enjoys guns and tries my convictions, and I am a knight-errant bound where my travels take me.” He forced himself to speak easily as he helped her up. “Did your maman never teach you better than to consort with strange men?”

“I am an orphan, and you don’t seem like a stranger to me.”

Although she spoke matter-of-factly, he recognized the glint of pain in the sea-silver depths of her eyes. He drew her against him, startled anew by her smallness, her sturdiness. He whispered, “I don’t want to hurt you.”

She nuzzled her cheek against his chest. “You’d never hurt a woman. You told me so.”

Desire swelled in him; he choked it off with a fresh dose of guilt. Before long she would learn who he was, and he’d never have the gift of her trust again.

At a leisurely pace they started back toward their horses, easing into a relationship that Rand knew could flourish only for a few more days—even hours, perhaps. He showed her a bittern’s nest occupied by four brown-speckled eggs. She showed him a limestone deposit and a ruined Roman aqueduct. He wove a crown of wildflowers and placed it on her head. She fashioned a tiny catapult from a green ash bough and showed him how to fling a stone fifty paces.

Rand scowled at the makeshift weapon. Putting it into his belt, he caught her against him. “You are impossible.”

“I am practical.”

“You are beautiful.”

“Prate not about the way I look. I would rather have you admire my skill at weaponry.”

He grinned. “Are all at Bois-Long as bloodthirsty as you?”

“Some are worse,” she said simply, and turned away.

Some are worse. Could she be speaking of her mistress? As he watched her untether her horse, his throat went tight with apprehension. Taking her by the shoulders, he stared at her. “Will your mistress punish you for taking the horse?”

Confusion, then amusement, chased across her features. “Of course not,” she said, flushing.

Relieved, he dropped a kiss on her brow.

“Will you come back?” she asked softly.

He swallowed. “I don’t know....”

“Are you leaving, resuming your travels?”

“My plans...are uncertain.”

She nodded, as if aware that what they had was tenuous. “I’ll come when I can in the late afternoon,” she said solemnly, “at the hour of the woodcock’s flight.”

Wishing the world would fall away and leave them to themselves, Rand hauled her against him and crushed his mouth down on hers.

But by the time he reached Eu, he knew he’d not go to the place of St. Cuthbert’s cross again. The selfish joy of being with Lianna was not worth the pain she’d suffer when she learned his purpose.

He rode out to sit alone on the cliffs where the breakers leaped up in an endless assault on the rocks. He longed to yank his dreams out of his heart and cast them into the sea, to turn himself back into the hollow shell he’d been before he’d met Lianna. She made him too human, too sensitive, and those qualities would serve him ill when the time came to take Bois-Long and his new wife.

He went back to the village, walked into the taproom, and found Jack Cade, who had agreed to act as his herald. Cheeks ruddy from too much hard Breton cider, Jack raised a wooden mug. “My lord of Longwood.”

Rand nodded curtly. “Tomorrow.”