Winter Song Page 19

  Even while he moved to seek the fourth man, Raymond had been wondering what he had married. True, he had been fed too full of shrinking violets who found a summer breeze too rough for endurance, but he had not planned to take a tigress to his bosom. Alys’s cry of horror and shuddering retreat erased that image, at least partially, from his mind. She was so small, and now that he was looking at her rather than for an enemy, he saw her face was pale and her eyes enormous. Hastily Raymond thrust the torch he carried into a wall bracket and pulled Alys toward him into a protective embrace.

  She tried to bury her face against him, but there was no warm comfort to be found in his steel-clad body. She lifted her head. “Who let them out?” she asked, and then in a higher, more nervous voice, “How does it come that you are here in the middle of the night? Did your meeting go ill? Are you pursued? Is there an enemy—”

  “No, love, no,” Raymond soothed. “There is no enemy, and my business went very well, indeed. I do not yet know how the prisoners escaped. I am here…” He hesitated. At another time he would have told the truth, but he felt foolish confessing a weak sentimentality to a woman who had nearly killed two men. “Matters were settled between Oliver and Marsan,” he went on, “and I did not wish to linger lest anyone have second thoughts. Let them grow accustomed to the new state of affairs. Then if there are rough edges, I will try to smooth them away.”

  His prevarication, however, was a waste of time. Once Raymond had assured her there was no new emergency, Alys remembered she had guessed there was a disloyal servant and she barely heard the remainder of his statement.

  “It must have been one of the servants,” she said. “But I do not know how anyone could get by Aelfric at night. Perhaps someone hid below during the day.”

  “Perhaps,” Raymond agreed, and shrugged. “We will discover the truth tomorrow.”

  “But they are all dead,” Alys pointed out, looking worried.

  Raymond was surprised, then realized she was speaking of the four men who had invaded the women’s quarters. “The other eight were trapped in the hall below,” he said. Suddenly that struck him funny and he started to laugh, squeezing Alys against him. “Down below are ten or twelve men-at-arms, all well trained and armed with swords, and they managed to kill one man and wound a few harmless servants. Up here, two women, unarmed, near killed four. Alys, you are turning the world upside down.”

  She smiled somewhat tremulously but did not answer, and after chuckling over his joke a little longer, Raymond let her go.

  “I must go down and see to the bestowal and guarding of those we caught. I do not want them loose again.”

  “No,” Alys agreed, “and let us hang them tomorrow. I do not think I will be at peace now until they are dead.”

  “We will see,” Raymond temporized.

  He was more interested in discovering how the escape had been contrived and who had contrived it than in the deaths of the seven men. Although he would not say so to Alys, Raymond knew that the danger would not be diminished by executing those men if there was a clever traitor inside the walls. He murmured some further comforting words and told Alys to go back to bed. He would be with her as soon as he could be.

  Actually, it was nearly an hour before he returned. In the main room, the women were still removing the last traces of bloody death from the floor, but his and Alys’s chamber was completely in order, and his wife sat beside the renewed fire with wine and cakes at hand, waiting to remove his armor. Once again pleasure and uneasiness mingled in Raymond. It was a delight not to need to soothe a screaming, fainting woman, to be himself tended in smiling calm, unarmed and wrapped in a warmed robe, and offered refreshment. Nonetheless, it did not seem right. After such an experience a proper woman should be prostrate, hysterical. Alys’s behavior was so unfeminine that Raymond found himself strangely reluctant to go to bed with her. It was not that he had forgotten that her strength was what had drawn him to her at first, but then she was Marlowe’s daughter. It was different now that she was his wife.

  “I took each man aside,” he said hastily, trying to push his uneasiness out of his mind, “and each told the same tale, that the bailiff Ernaldus had set them free.”

  “No!” Alys exclaimed. “It is impossible. Arnald has been by the gate since you left, watching who came and went. He would not have admitted Ernaldus—at least, not without asking me. Could the men have been deceived about who it was in the dark?”

  “More likely it is a story they concerted together to shield their ally,” Raymond said, “but I will get the truth from them.”

  Alys made no reply to that, staring into the fire while Raymond finished his wine. He sipped it slowly at first, then realized that delaying the inevitable was stupid, and tossed the remainder off in several long swallows.

  “And so to bed,” he said, with slightly more emphasis than necessary. “It is very late.”

  Alys rose with alacrity. In the time that Raymond had been below, the numbness in her mind had worn off, and horror and fear had coursed over her in waves. It was only with the greatest difficulty that she had restrained herself from running down after her husband and clinging to him. The relief she felt when he joined her had made it possible for her to smile at him and perform her duties, but when he spoke of getting the truth from the prisoners, her sense of horror had returned. That meant torture. Alys hated it, but would not say a word against it. The prisoners deserved it, and it was necessary that the truth be discovered.

  In bed she flung herself on Raymond and gripped him frantically. The gesture was unfortunate, bringing into Raymond’s well-educated mind visions of harpy claws clutching at helpless prey. He stiffened slightly and then said, “It was a long ride, Alys. I am tired.”

  The remark seemed totally irrelevant to Alys. There was nothing in what she desired that required any effort on Raymond’s part. The idea of making love after the horrors she had seen and experienced had not entered her mind. All Alys was aware of was that her husband was lying flat with his arms at his sides, and she wanted those arms around her.

  “Hold me. Hold me,” she insisted.

  Reluctantly Raymond brought one arm around her waist, the other around her shoulders. He was distressed, worried because he felt no stirring of passion despite the fact that Alys lay nearly atop him. Embarrassed by the fact that he found himself incapable of satisfying what he thought was her desire, he said more sharply, “I am tired. Let me be.”

  All Alys could think was that her weight was troubling her husband. She slid herself off him and instead pressed herself to his side. When his arms began to slip away, however, she protested, and he continued to embrace her. Alys wished that Raymond would hold her more firmly. There was some comfort to be found in the warmth of his body and the simple weight of his arms, but not the full sense of security she needed.

  Alys was not a self-effacing girl. She had always been too important to her father and too well treated by him to feel a need to shrink herself into insignificance. However, she was also well trained. For all his love and indulgence, William had not really spoiled her. She knew that it was wrong to demand attention from a tired, irritable man. She thought, too, that Raymond was not looking forward to the questioning of the prisoners. It was most reasonable he should wish to lose himself in sleep.

  Still, the flaccid way his arms rested on her and the slight tilt of his body away from hers sent the wrong message to her jumping nerves. She could not rest. The strength of her grip on Raymond was not enough. She needed an answering grip to assure her of protection. In the meantime, faint sounds made their way to her from the main chamber. She knew that the noises were made by the maidservants finishing their cleaning and settling back to sleep, but the knowledge did nothing to soothe her. She kept remembering the faint, strange sounds that had awakened her before the prisoners had broken in. Alys began to shiver, and tears began to roll down her cheeks.

  Raymond ground his teeth, thinking she was trembling with passion and crying with frust
ration at his rejection. If he could have satisfied her, he would have done so, but he was cold as a stone, and his incapacity only further enraged him.

  “What the devil ails you?” he snarled. “Can you not leave me to sleep?”

  “I am sorry, my lord,” Alys whispered, stifling sobs. “I did not mean to disturb you. I cannot help it. I am so frightened.”

  “Frightened! Of what?”

  “I am sorry to be so silly,” she whimpered. “I know the danger has passed, but…” Her voice broke in sobs. “But it was so horrible…those men…and all the blood…and they chased me in the dark…and…”

  “Alys, Alys.” Raymond turned and pulled her against him. “What a fool I am! My poor little love. You were so quiet, and you smiled at me. I had no idea you were afraid.”

  He held her tight, rocking her in his arms, kissing the tears from her face, murmuring comfort. In a few minutes the shivering and the tears stopped, but her frantic grip had not relaxed and Raymond continued to rock her while her sobs diminished to little catches of breath. Then her hands loosened, and she nestled her head into his shoulder, sighing thanks and another soft apology for troubling him.

  But now Raymond was troubled in another way. The rhythmic rocking had pressed Alys’s breasts to his chest in a regular, suggestive pattern and one of her legs had slipped between his thighs, rubbing back and forth against his genitals. He was hard and ready now, but Alys seemed unaware. She lay against him limply, breathing shallowly and somewhat unevenly. Raymond was reasonably sure she had fallen asleep. He was not surprised. Sudden sleep was a not uncommon result of relief after fear and exertion. He hesitated, wondering whether he should allow her to sleep, but his need was urgent.

  With the arm supporting Alys’s neck, Raymond lifted her face and kissed her lips. He passed his other hand down over her body, caressing her breast, belly, hip, and thigh. She did not push his hand away or turn her head from his lips, but she did not respond, either, other than by a faint murmur.

  Raymond could not decide whether it was a protest at being disturbed or a sleepy acquiescence. He thought of waking her completely by more drastic methods, but then he wondered what it would be like to take a sleeping woman. Would she remember at all? Would she think she had been dreaming?

  Softly, Raymond removed his arm from under his wife’s neck and laid her flat. She twitched and murmured, and Raymond paused. He did not want her to wake now. Her limp helplessness was exciting to him. He spread her legs carefully, just as carefully positioned himself, and began a slow insertion. It was not as easy or as smooth as usual. Raymond had to stop, draw, and press inward several times, and twice Alys tried to twist away, so that he had to lie flat atop her to hold her still.

  Once he was well seated, Raymond found movement somewhat easier, but the whole thing was rapidly becoming a grave disappointment. The sensation was not as pleasurable as when Alys was moist and ready. He missed her passionate response, the extra thrill when the wriggle of her body under his caused contact with an especially sensitive area, the touch of exploring hands that tickled, stroked, scratched tenderly. Also the limp flaccidity of her body had ceased to please him. There was something unpleasantly reminiscent of the corpses he had touched, and even when that image was erased, Raymond felt vaguely guilty, as if he had committed a sneaking act of dishonesty. That notion was ridiculous because a man had a right to use his wife any way he wished—to beat her or kill her, not to mention taking his pleasure of her any way he desired, but the knowledge did not dispel the uneasy discomfort.

  Now, however, Raymond was caught in a quandary. Friction had generated too great a physical sensation to permit him to withdraw, but his dissatisfaction with himself was preventing him from relaxing enough to come to climax. His first response was to move furiously, and he thought he would succeed, but he was soon exhausted. His movements slowed, stopped, and he lay still for a few seconds, sobbing with frustration and anxiety. This had never happened to him before.

  Had Raymond not been so self-absorbed, he would have wondered how any woman could sleep through the violent activity of the last few minutes. Alys, of course, had not. When he began to plunge, her blue eyes opened wide with astonishment. Even before that she had been vaguely aware of Raymond’s handling. She was still to some degree in shock and very exhausted herself, and could not respond either to welcome him or reject him. However, as he entered her and began to move, she became increasingly aware and, at first, both indignant and frightened.

  Alys knew as well as Raymond that she was her husband’s chattel. She knew a husband had the right to do anything he wanted to or with his wife, but Alys had never thought Raymond would use her without her consent and compliance. Very soon, however, amusement began to replace her earlier, less pleasant emotions. It became more and more obvious that Raymond was very dissatisfied with his experiment. His eyes were closed, as was customary for him during coupling, but his face did not have its normal rapt expression of ecstasy. His brow was creased with unhappiness, his lips tight with effort.

  Love and sympathy bade Alys help him. Shrewdness and mischief instructed her to let him run his course. The increasing desperation of his behavior assured her that he would not again try to take advantage of her when she was helpless or unwilling. However, Alys was not having everything her own way, either. Raymond’s violent activity was producing a powerful effect, and it was increasingly difficult for her to remain passive. He had very nearly tipped the scales in the balance between stubbornness and desire that was raging in Alys when he gave up and lay still.

  Raymond’s failure to come to climax liberated Alys. At first she did nothing, biting her lips and trying to swallow her own frustrations, thinking he had finally satisfied himself. But he did not withdraw, and Alys realized his lessoning had been more complete than she had expected. Sighing with pleasure, she turned her head and kissed her husband’s neck. Raymond jerked. Thoroughly ashamed of himself and furious with himself for being ashamed, he would have pulled away despite his inflamed condition, but Alys now embraced him.

  “Were you awake all the time?” he asked tightly.

  “Not all the time,” Alys murmured, stroking his back down along the spine, which she knew excited him, and moving her hips just a tiny bit from side to side.

  “Then why the devil did you lie like a dead woman?” Raymond grated.

  “I thought it was what you desired, my lord,” Alys replied, sweetly meek.

  Since her hands and lips were now adding considerably to the heat Raymond had generated in himself, he accepted her statement at face value. Mollified, he began to caress her, and to move again, slowly now, savoring the lift of her body in answer to his, the fingers that petted and scratched ever so gently at spots he had taught her were sensitive.

  Alys sighed and murmured wordlessly, shifted to change the angle at which he touched her, and urged an increase in their rhythm with the contractions of her legs. The uneasy tension, the pricking, unsatisfying heat, disappeared. Raymond’s brow smoothed, a familiar warmth enveloped him, spreading outward from his sheathed shaft and yet flowing back there and intensifying from the places where Alys touched him. This was right, this was perfect. Raymond surrendered to the voluptuous joy that could only be taken when it was also given.

  Chapter Twelve

  Both Alys and Raymond slept late the following morning. Indeed, the whole castle was still abed long past their usual waking hour. However, even after maids and men rolled up their pallets and made ready for the day’s activity, there was no sound or movement from the great bed. Bertha peeped into her mistress’s bedchamber several times but, seeing the bed curtains still closed, did not intrude. She did, however, set the maids to their work. It was a mark of how different conditions were that a few dared to grumble that they should have a day of rest after their dreadful experience. Bertha reprimanded them sharply, but in a way she was glad. A few days earlier none would have had enough spirit to grumble, even under her breath.

  It was
not in Bertha’s power to declare a day’s rest, but she would not have done so even if she could. Like Alys, she believed that no time could be wasted in renewing the spinning and weaving skills these women either had never learned or had forgotten. Money should not be wasted to purchase coarse cloth for the servants’ dresses, for pallets, for horsecloths, blankets, and the like. Moreover, a quota of such products was easy to set to be finished while master and mistress were absent from a keep. The menservants’ tasks could not be deferred. Hewing wood, carrying water, the men-at-arms would see those things done for their own comfort and depended on them, however, if maids did not have a quota of spinning, weaving, sewing, and embroidering, there was nothing to stop them from idling away their days.

  It was the creak of the looms that woke Alys. By the time the sound reached her bedchamber, it was faint and distorted, but it reawakened the fear that carried over from the previous night. Alys sat up suddenly, and her swift movement startled Raymond awake. He pulled back the bed curtain swiftly, asking, “What is it?”

  “Nothing,” Alys replied, having recognized the sound as soon as she was awake. “The women are at work, and I heard the loom creaking.” Still, her voice trembled slightly.

  Raymond smiled and put an arm around her. “There is nothing to fear now. I am here.”

  She relaxed against him and nodded, smiling also. “You are my shield even when you are not by me,” she told him. “It was only because I was so lonely for you that I was not murdered in my bed. I could not sleep for missing you and every noise…” Her voice drifted into silence, and her fair brows knit in a frown. “Raymond,” she continued quickly, “I swear I heard door hinges squeal last night. I was so sure of it that I got out of bed to check on the women, but they were all asleep.”

  “You cannot be sure of that,” Raymond soothed. He was not displeased with Alys’s apparent nervousness. It seemed to him a perfect balance between the unwomanly hardness of which he had thought her guilty the preceding night and the too-great sensibility his mother and sisters displayed. “One of them might have seen the light of your candle and run back to bed.”