In the Shadow of Midnight Page 6

  “Do you doubt you can put an eloquent enough pledge in the marshal’s ear?”

  “I could put it to the pope himself, for all the good it would do.”

  Rhys grinned and pulled on his gloves, tamping each finger snug to the joint. “You do not think the old lion will see any benefit to allying himself with Gwynedd? God’s blood, man, he will see the proposal with a warrior’s eye, if nothing else. Access to Snowdonia gives him access to Ireland as well as half of northern Wales. And did you see the brother’s eyes glisten when he thought of Cardigan? I could bed the wench tonight and the brother would cheer us on.”

  Dafydd reached out a hand and hooked Iorwerth’s arm, halting the echo of their heavy bootsteps in the stone corridor.

  “You are not thinking of—”

  “Lying in wait for the fair demoiselle and ravishing her to seal our pact?” Rhys laughed and started walking again. “In truth, the thought occurred to me. I’m hard enough to ride a brace of maids, top and bottom, and still have leavings for a slut or two. But no. You may rest easy on that count, little brother. Your tender morals are as safe as I will expect you to keep hers on the way to Normandy and back. It is important to make no mistakes, to present our intentions in the best, most honourable light. I want her to come to me willingly and pure. I want no taint of corruption or coersion to shadow this marriage.”

  “In this quest for purity … are you forgetting you already have a wife?”

  Rhys stopped suddenly enough and angrily enough to send Dafydd’s brows arching upward.

  “I am not forgetting. How could I forget a spindle-legged, gap-toothed weanling who weeps ceaselessly whenever I am lucky enough—or sodden enough—to succeed in prying her knees apart?”

  “Nevertheless—”

  “Nevertheless,” Rhys interrupted with a scowl, “I have tried a thousand times over the past seven years of our wedded ordeal to plant the seeds of an heir in her womb … to no avail. The bitch is barren. It will take no great effort to be rid of her, which is why I am returning to Deheubarth and you are travelling to Normandy. You will seal this alliance with the old lion, promising him anything if need be, so long as you return with his sealed contract before Llywellyn sniffs anything in the wind.”

  “What about the king’s men?” “What about them?”

  “How can you kidnap them, hold them to ransom, then send them back to John without Llywellyn catching the scent?”

  “It takes a grievous long time for the odour of corpses to rise up through the earth,” Rhys said matter-of-factly. “By then, my new bride will be queen of Gwynedd.”

  He glared his declaration into Dafydd’s eyes a moment longer then turned and ducked through an arched doorway, leaving the younger man staring after him, his expression carefully guarded against the disdain he was feeling.

  It was typical of Rhys to expect the world to bend to his designs. Typical of him to think the marshal would welcome him eagerly to the House of Pembroke. Typical to think a woman like Ariel de Glare would be as easily crushed under his thumb as the other cows he normally took to his bed.

  But if he thought Llywellyn would simply stand by and do nothing while he raised the Pembroke lions over the battlements of Deheubarth …

  Dafydd almost chuckled to himself. Indeed, it would be his pleasure to escort Lady Ariel to Normandy and plead his brother’s case to the Marshal of England. It would be equally pleasurable to bring back an echo of the lion’s laughter, or, should the heavens split open and gold florins fall from the sky, to bring him back his new bride and stand aside while Rhys and Llywellyn fought each other over possession of Gwynedd.

  For with any luck at all, they would kill each other and he would be free of them both.

  Château D’Amboise, Touraine

  Chapter 3

  It was the blade of sunlight that disturbed him. A single bright beam of light had found a narrow chink between the wooden shutters and had crept slowly across the width of the bed, stroking a path of lazy warmth across the faces of the two recuperating occupants.

  The first had tiny beads of dampness glistening on her brow and throat. She looked and, indeed, was utterly drained and depleted by the activities of the hour preceding her collapse. The raw potency of the energies she had expended softened the lines of her face and showed in the swollen redness of her lips. The mottled pinkness across her breasts and belly kept her warm and scorned the need for any covering or blanket.

  She dozed with her head cradled on a muscular shoulder, her body curved against another of immensely powerful proportions. A soft white arm was flung limply across a chest thickened and plated by years of wielding heavy swords and lances; a pale limb was hooked over a thigh that might have been carved from marble. The hand of her companion was broad and callused, and rested in the tangled, damp nest of her hair; another cupped the plump white flesh of her rump and periodically moved through a stretch or a vague restlessness to pull her softness against him.

  The blade of sunlight spilled its liquid gold over the man’s strong, square jaw, lighting a mouth that had, until a sennight ago, been issuing battle orders and shouting words of encouragement to fellow knights as they fought a bloody melee with King Philip’s army at Blois. The rout had been a complete success, but the knight had been wounded slightly in the crush of steel and armour, and the ragged cut on his arm still glowed an angry red between the barber’s row of knotted threads.

  It was only a trifling wound and the memory of earning it had probably already been lost amongst the scores of other scars, some big, some small, that marked the powerful musculature of his body. One of the cruelest scars he bore disfigured his left cheek. It was not so hideous as to make a maid faint outright from the sight, but it was shocking enough to draw stares and sighs of pity, for without the flaw, he would have been handsome enough to leave women swooning and gawking for very different reasons.

  It was just as well, though, for he had little time or interest to spare on women. He liked them well enough and used them often enough to bolster his reputation for being more than just a champion in the lists. For the most part, however, he preferred to release his tensions on the battlefield or the practice yards, leaving the wenching and whoring to those who thrived on it.

  At twenty-six, he was in his prime as a fighting man and to his credit had amassed a respectable personal fortune on the tournament circuit, winning prizes of armour and horseflesh from his defeated opponents, then ransoming them back for double their original worth. He had never suffered the ignominy of a loss himself. He could, in fact, boast of being split from a saddle by only one man—coincidentally the only man who could have won a rueful smile as a result of the ungallant tumbling. That man was his father, Randwulf de la Seyne Sur Mer, Baron d’Amboise, Scourge of Mirebeau, champion to the dowager queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine.

  The sunlight continued to pour its golden heat across the thick crescents of chestnut lashes and Eduard FitzRandwulf d’Amboise was forced to open them. He squinted up into the brilliant shaft and the smokey gray of his eyes was seared almost colourless. His annoyance brought a muffled curse to his lips and he turned, pressing a kiss into the crown of the woman’s head. A yawn and a phantom itch gave him an excuse to untangle his arms and limbs and start the process of extricating himself from the bed, but the wench knew his tricks and, in a move so subtle it impressed the breath from his lungs, she parted her thighs and shifted herself sideways, drawing him slowly up and into her sleek warmth.

  Half asleep, wholly focussed on the swelling spear of turgid flesh within her, she roused herself with sinewy, catlike stretches, waiting until his blooded fullness was as thick and deep as she could coax it before she lifted her head and purred.

  “You were not thinking of leaving me just yet were you, my lord?”

  The husky, throaty sound of her voice washed over him, and his hands moved of their own accord to fill themselves with the incredibly ripe, round globes of her breasts. “I confess … I did not want to trouble you
further.”

  She looked down to where the dark red discs of her nipples had stiffened against his fingers, forming two jutting peaks, hard as berries, tempting as sin.

  “When I want you to stop troubling me, my lord, I will tell you plainly enough. Listen—” she whispered, leaning over to nip the lobe of his ear between her teeth, “and tell me what you hear.”

  Eduard sucked at a breath and his hands grasped hold of her hips as she began to move over him. Diamond-shaped flecks of blue altered the pewter gray of his eyes, the blue becoming darker and deeper with each stroke of sliding heat that engulfed him. The strong, supple limbs gripped his thighs like a vise and as the greedy fist of her womanhood became more and more insistent, his hips began to surge upward, answering the determined tug and pull of her flesh.

  Gabrielle was blissfully aware of the mighty tremors building and gathering in the rock-hard flesh beneath her and she braced her hands on his chest, letting each thrust carry her to a new peak of sensation. He was by far her most virile lover, although his visits came so infrequently she wondered how he could survive with all this pressure stored up inside him. She would never dare ask, but she often wondered why he came to her when there were so many other, younger, prettier maids within the castle walls who would have spun rainbows to please the son of La Seyne Sur Mer. There was only one possible reason she could think of, for she did not flatter herself that her lovemaking skills were any more or less astounding, given the prowess of the man who sought them. Rather, she suspected it had something to do with the fact she was barren, and, being a bastard himself, he had no desire to father another into the world.

  Whatever the reason, she was only glad to know that when he did feel the need to release himself, he did so with her.

  And did it so splendidly.

  A groan shivered in Gabrielle’s throat and she urged her body through a blurred frenzy of ecstasy, not slowing or stopping until the last drop, the last shudder had been wrung from his flesh. Only then, limp and laughing from sheer exhilaration, she collapsed in a weak, trembling heap in his arms.

  Eduard held her that way until his own senses were restored, then chuckled softly as he tilted her face up to his. “Why are you always determined to see me hauled back to the castle in a trundle cart?”

  Gabrielle smiled so deeply a dimple appeared in each cheek. “It is always a challenge to see if I can keep you here an hour more.”

  “An hour more and they will be searching the baileys and bothys for my sapless corpse.”

  “Nonsense. A man finds his strength in a woman’s womb. And you, my lord, have never run short of sap yet.”

  As she spoke, Gabrielle ran her hand across his chest, combing her fingers through the luxuriant mat of crisp chestnut curls. Her fingers snagged briefly on the gold ring he wore suspended from a leathern thong around his neck, but she passed it by without a thought, continuing to trace lacy patterns down onto the lean, flat plane of his belly, then lower still to the coarse, dark nest of hair at his groin.

  They both smiled at the immediate response she won when her hand curled around the thick shaft of his flesh, and, with a sigh, she set her lips and tongue to following the same meandering path her hand had taken downward.

  “Will I see you again before you return to Blois?”

  “I cannot say for certain,” he admitted honestly. “We have been gone from camp a week; too long for a troop of restless knights to remain calmly on their own side of the river.”

  “Have your father’s wounds healed?”

  “My father is made of iron, in flesh and in will. His leg began to heal the instant Lady Servanne set her hands to it.”

  “Mmmm … You have been gone from Amboise three months? I warrant it was not the laying on of milady’s hands that wrought such miracles.”

  Eduard closed his eyes and pressed his head back into the rush-filled mattress. He could not argue with Gabrielle’s theory; his father and stepmother were as much in love now as they had been when they had married fourteen summers ago. The slightest look or most innocent touch could still send them hurrying behind closed doors—where they had, in truth, spent most of the past seven days and nights.

  Eduard himself had managed to resist such fleshly pursuits until today, until the sights and sounds and smells of a lusty autumn day had sent him wandering across the draw and down into the village of Amboise, to the tiny mud and wattle cottage where he knew he would be welcomed without any questions, without any demands of any kind.

  Well, hardly any demands.

  He drew as much air as his lungs could hold and tried to steady himself, tried to ignore the lapping, wet heat that was determined to show no mercy this day. He heard a muffled laugh and he cursed, knowing he had gone too long without a woman to count on any measure of control now.

  The taste of success made Gabrielle’s mouth bolder and the shock sent his hands down, sent his fingers curling into the black waves of her hair. Her zeal was genuine, her energy boundless. Gabrielle had been widowed three times in nine years by men who, it was generally agreed, had wasted away from sheer exhaustion—all with deliriously wide grins on their faces. She was four years older than Eduard, looked ten years younger, and made no secret of what she considered to be the fountain of youth.

  It was well over an hour later when Eduard ducked beneath the low-slung lintel of the door and stepped out into a cool rush of shaded air. The sun had already dipped below the tops of the trees, casting long, slender shadows across the surface of the nearby river. The village, nestled securely in an elbow of the Loire, was all but completely swallowed by the silhouette of the castle that dominated the high ridge above. When viewed against a hazed, blood-red sunset, Amboise’s ramparts, towers, and spires were magnificent and magical; seen emerging from the vaporous morning mists, it was a cold and menacing display of Norman military efficiency.

  As Eduard walked up the steep and narrow approach to the enormous barbican towers that guarded the entry to the castle grounds, he grinned at the lingering weakness in his limbs. It was not the first time he had cursed the height of the earthworks surrounding the outer walls, nor the first time he paused at the drawbridge to catch his breath and glance back down at the thatched roof of the widow’s cottage. In fairness, he should not have strayed today, not after leaving his men strict orders to work themselves and their horses through their paces. The past seven days and nights of inactivity had left him restless, and while the others had made good use of their wives and whores the first few days of their arrival home, Eduard had raised a sweat with sword and lance, practising from dawn until dusk.

  As much as he had missed the peace and serenity of Amboise, lengthy periods of inactivity were a curse he found increasingly difficult to bear, especially when he knew the French were pressing hard to advance into the province of Touraine. In the past month alone, he had led two skirmishes that had driven Philip’s army back across the Loire; he had won a resounding victory in a third when French knights had attempted an ill-planned assault on their encampment. Eduard and his father had returned to Amboise a sennight ago, neither in the keenest of spirits to do so, but Lord Randwulf had been sorely wounded in the ambush and it had taken all of his son’s considerable powers of persuasion, plus his armed insistence, to convince the mighty Black Wolf of Amboise he would heal faster at home.

  Home, Eduard mused, gazing up at the formidable battlements.

  Amboise Castle was designed like most Norman strongholds, with the original inner keep being the central structure around which the other buildings and wards had been added and built up over the generations. The main keep rose sixty feet from its widened base, buttressed by earthworks and protected by a draw that had rarely been raised over the past century, but which could, if necessary, seal off all access to the massive stone tower. The surrounding moat no longer held water except in times of heavy rains, and clusters of buildings had sprung up around the earthworks to house the barracks, stables, armoury, psalteries, cook houses, smith
y, and weavers cottages—all comprising a small community contained within the inner curtain wall, a block and mortar barrier fifteen feet high, guarded by double-leaf iron doors and flanked by tall, square watchtowers.

  This was the heart of Amboise, and to reach the heart, one had to successfully breach a well-defended outer bailey, which contained among other things, the practice fields and tilting grounds, also the pens and stables that housed the livestock.

  A second wall enclosed this outer bailey and was the castle’s first defense. Built strong enough to withstand attack by catapult, battering ram, or trebuchet, the fortified battlements were forty feet high and eight feet thick, faced with rough-cut limestone blocks mortared around a core of rock rubble. Entrance was gained through the huge iron portcullis gate, which required the combined efforts of ten men on winches to raise and lower. The jagged iron teeth were suspended no higher than the measure of a man on horseback, the spikes held so tautly on their chains as to hum ominously in any breath of wind.

  The flanking barbican towers were, in turn, built like small fortresses, the walls thick enough to house passageways for archers, and slotted with chutes for pouring boiling oil and pitch on the heads of would-be attackers. No one passing through the main gates was not well and truly aware of the strength of the garrison patrolling the crenellated battlements, or doubted that the other towers constructed at hundred-foot intervals along the span of the wall were equally prepared to discourage unwelcome visitors. Day and night the walls were manned by sentries whose armour, swords, and helms reflected jabbing needles of light to observers from the village below. Each boldly displayed the black and gold device of Randwulf de la Seyne Sur Mer, bearing the menacing depiction of a prowling wolf, the head full-faced and snarling.

  The Wolf’s pennants had not always flown over Amboise. The castle and its vast adjoining demesnes had been deeded to La Seyne Sur Mer as a reward for his many years of faithful service to Eleanor of Aquitaine. He had taken up residence fourteen years ago, the same summer he had wed Lady Servanne de Briscourt; the same summer he had fought a Dragon and outwitted a future king.