She raised her head from his shoulder. For a moment her eyes met his. He thought he would drown in their emerald depths. “You are wrong, my lord. My mother’s experience taught me that passion by itself is not love. But I begin to believe that the two may be bound together.”
Hugh smiled wryly. “I confess that I am beyond engaging in a reasoned argument about the subject at the moment, Alice.”
“But, my lord, I think the distinction between the two is very important.”
“Nay. ‘Tis not at all important.” Hugh silenced her with his mouth.
He did not release her until her lips had parted beneath his and she clung to him so tightly he knew she could not, of her own accord, let go. Only then did he ease himself away from her long enough to unbuckle his sword belt and remove his black outer tunic.
She watched with brilliant eyes as he set the scabbard down close by. He was wryly chagrined to see that his hand shook slightly. He took a deep, steadying breath and then he spread his tunic on the stone floor of the cave.
The simple task seemed to require an enormous degree of concentration. When he was finished he straightened and looked at Alice from the other side of the makeshift bed.
He saw the shadows in her eyes and a terrible fear clawed at his guts.
Then, with a tremulous smile, she gave him her hand.
Hugh breathed a silent sigh of satisfaction and overwhelming relief. He lowered himself onto the black tunic and gently pulled Alice down to join him. Her skirts frothed around his thighs as she sprawled, warm and inviting, across his chest.
Her eyes widened with concern as she settled into place, “My lord, you will surely be mashed against the hard stone.”
He chuckled. “I have never had a softer quilt.”
She touched his cheek with her fingertips and wriggled into a more comfortable position. Hugh groaned as her gently rounded thighs pressed more firmly against his rigid shaft. Without warning the desire that smoldered within him flared into a searing blaze. He felt the flames devour the last vestiges of his control.
Alice wanted him and she was his betrothed wife. Nothing stood in his way. Nothing else mattered.
Hugh surrendered to the firestorm that he had ignited. He caught Alice’s face between his hands and kissed her with an urgency he could no longer conceal. To his soaring delight, she responded enthusiastically, if awkwardly, to the bruising kiss. He heard a muffled mmmph and then he almost laughed aloud as her teeth clinked against his own.
“Easy, my sweet,” he said into her mouth. “There is no need to swallow me whole. You shall have all you want of me before we have finished.”
She moaned and buried her fingers in his hair.
He cradled her head in place with one hand and reached down to raise the hem of her skirts. His palm slid along the length of her bare thigh all the way to the gentle curves above. He found the valley that divided the luscious hillocks and followed its course to the hot spring that awaited him.
“Hugh.”
He stroked her carefully, preparing her for his entry. He wanted her delirious with need so that she would not feel pain, if there was any, when he claimed her. He wanted everything to be perfect.
Thunder shook the skies. The rain was a gray curtain in front of the cavern mouth.
When Hugh fumbled with his undertunic and loosened his braies, Alice raised her head briefly to gaze down at him with passion-clouded eyes. For a few heart-stopping seconds he thought she was going to ask him to halt the lovemaking. He wondered, with an odd sense of detachment, if doing so would kill him on the spot.
“Hugh.”
The sound of his name on her lips made his blood pound. Excitement tore through him. She was thoroughly ensnared by their mutual passion, he told himself.
It would be a fine stratagem indeed, if Alice were to believe herself in love.
With a groan he crushed her mouth against his own and moved his hand between her thighs. Her murmurs of longing were sweeter than honeyed dates, more potent than an alchemist’s elixir. The more he tasted of her, the more he hungered. Hugh was engulfed with a seemingly insatiable need.
He pulled Alice’s skirts up to her waist and eased her legs apart so that she straddled him. The scent of her dewy body filled him with an overpowering eagerness.
He freed himself completely from his braies and probed until he found the plumped, moist petals that hid the entrance to the secret citadel. He entered her with a care that strained his self-mastery to the limit. Her body was impossibly tight around him. It was as though he tried to ease himself through the narrow entrance of a cave passage.
It was as he had thought. She was a virgin.
He must be careful, Hugh told himself. He must not take this keep too quickly.
His jaw clenched with the effort to control his own need.
He stormed the fragile gates slowly, steadily, until both of their bodies were damp with perspiration. Alice’s nails bit through the fabric of his undertunic.
“You are well guarded,” he whispered hoarsely. “Am I hurting you?”
“Aye, a little.”
He closed his eyes, gathering himself, seeking restraint. “I would not have it so. Do you want me to stop?”
“Nay.”
Hugh breathed a small sigh of relief. In truth, he had not been certain that he possessed the will to halt what had been begun. “I shall proceed slowly,” he promised.
Alice eased aside the neck opening of his undertunic and nibbled gently at his shoulder. “I do not want you to proceed slowly. I would have done with this business quickly.”
He groaned. “This is supposed to be a pleasurable task, not one that requires fortitude.”
“Will you finish it when I give the command?”
He flexed his hands on her hips. “Mayhap you are right. It would be less painful if it were done swiftly.”
“Do it now then.” Without warning Alice sank her teeth into his shoulder.
“Blood of the devil.” Startled by the small, sharp, and wholly unexpected pain, Hugh instinctively tightened his hold on Alice, sucked in his breath, and surged upward.
Alice gave a muffled squeak but Hugh could not have retreated if he had wished. The last remnants of his self-mastery gave way as surely as the delicate barrier that had guarded Alice’s chastity.
Loosed from the bonds that he had used to govern himself for most of his life, Hugh drove deep into Alice. She clenched fiercely around him, snug and hot.
Outside the cave the storm reached its peak. Lightning flashed in the distance. The rain roared on the stony cliffs. The world shrank down to the cavern in which Hugh lay with Alice. Nothing else mattered, he thought. Nothing.
He heard Alice moan softly. He reached his hand down between his own body and hers, found the taut little nubbin of womanly flesh, and stroked.
She tensed and cried out. The delicate shivers rippled through her.
Hugh lifted himself again and again, thrusting deep into the tight passage until the world spun around him. Thunder shook the cliffs as his release rolled through him. It was a release far different from any he had ever known. For the first time in the whole of his thirty years he knew what it was to be consumed by passion. He understood why the poets wanted to give this intense sensation another, more glorious name.
For a brief, fleeting instant, he thought he comprehended at last why they wanted to call it love.
Alice stirred a long while later. She was aware of a distinct soreness between her legs but she felt strangely content. A part of her looked into the future and knew a cautious hope.
She had traveled to a fascinating new land with Hugh this day. Surely the experience that they had just shared would bind them together.
She opened her eyes and found him watching her with an unblinking, shuttered gaze. Some of her joyous anticipation faded. She saw at once that the indications of softness and vulnerability she thought she had discovered in him had already vanished. The dark knight had resumed the mant
le of his own legend.
A wistful regret dimmed her newly formed dreams for the future. She told herself she must have patience. Hugh was not the sort of man who would change overnight.
She tried to think of something truly brilliant and fascinating to say, something that a woman in her position, a woman who had just shared a passionate interlude with a legendary knight, might say. Something that would touch his heart. Something magical.
She cleared her throat delicately. “I believe that it has ceased raining, my lord.”
“Are you all right?”
So much for finding memorable words. Alice scowled. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be perfectly all right? What a silly question.”
His hard mouth kicked up a little at one corner. “It seemed the appropriate thing to ask under the circumstances.”
It occurred to Alice that he might not be any more skilled at conversations of this sort than she. The thought warmed her. “Rather like my comment on the rain?”
His expression softened slightly. “Aye.” He eased her to a sitting position beside him. He frowned when he saw her wince. “Alice?”
“‘Tis nothing, my lord.” She fumbled with her gown.
Before she could get her skirts arranged he reached out to touch her inner thigh. She blushed with embarrassment when he withdrew fingers that were stained with a reddish moisture.
Hugh stared at his hand. “Alice, we must talk.”
“About the rain or my health?”
“About marriage.”
Alice paused in the act of adjusting her gown. “This is too much, sir. ‘Tis one thing to be called Relentless,‘Tis quite another to feel compelled to live up to the title at every single opportunity.”
“Alice—”
“How dare you spoil such a pleasant, intimate interlude by returning to our old argument before I have even righted my skirts?”
“A pleasant, intimate interlude? Is that all this was to you?”
She flushed. “Nay, my lord, but I assumed that was likely all it meant to you. Surely you do not intend to tell me that this is the first time you have made love to a woman?” She paused. The possibility that they had shared this experience for the first time together sent a bright shaft of happiness through her. “Or is it?”
His eyes narrowed. “‘Tis the first time I have made love to a woman to whom I am bound by a vow of betrothal.”
“Oh.” Of course he had been no true virgin, she thought. He was thirty years old. And a man. His honor was not bound up with his chastity. “Well, I do not see that it makes a great deal of difference.”
He caught her chin on the edge of his fist. “Most women in your position, madam, would be pleased to discuss marriage at this moment.”
“I would rather talk about the weather.”
“That is unfortunate, because we are going to discuss marriage.”
Not until you learn to love me, she vowed silently. “Sir, I would remind you that we made a bargain.”
“That bargain has been altered by what just happened here, Alice. There is a question of honor at stake.”
She caught her breath at the sight of the determination gleaming in his golden eyes. There was no tender emotion in him, no talk of love or even of passion. Hugh was, as always, simply proceeding along the most direct path to his goal. Nothing, least of all a woman’s heart, would be allowed to get in the way. Her stomach clenched.
“Sir, if you thought to use lovemaking as a stratagem to force me to marry you, then you have made a grave error.”
He appeared startled. Then anger flashed in his eyes. “You were a virgin.”
“Aye, but that changes nothing. As I never intended to wed, I had no duty to save my virginity for my husband. I am as free as you yourself, sir, and I have chosen to exercise that freedom today.”
“Damnation, you are the most stubborn female I have ever encountered,” he exploded softly. “You may be free, but I am not. I am bound by my honor in this matter.”
“What has honor to do with this?” she demanded.
“You are my betrothed.” Hugh moved one big hand in a gesture of masculine outrage. “We have just consummated this marriage.”
“Not to my mind. Canon law is not at all clear on this subject.”
“Bones of the devil, woman,” Hugh roared. “Do not talk to me as though you had studied the finer points of law in Paris and Bologna. We are speaking of my honor here. I shall make my own judgments in this thing.”
Alice blinked. “Really, sir, you are behaving in a most distraught fashion. I’m certain that when you’ve had an opportunity to settle your nerves—”
“My nerves are just fine, thank you. ‘Tis my temper with which you had best concern yourself. Hear me well, Alice. We have crossed the river that separates a betrothal from a marriage. There are no longer any grounds to distinguish between the two.”
“Well, as to the legality of the thing,” she countered primly, “I just told you, canon law is a bit vague.”
“Nay, madam, it is not in the least vague. Furthermore, if you think to drag this matter through the Church courts, I promise you that there will be the devil to pay.”
“My lord, you are clearly overwrought.”
“What is more,” Hugh added with an ominous gentleness, “the devil will receive his due long before the Church gets around to dealing with your case. Do I make myself plain?”
Alice’s resolve wavered in the face of the blatant threat. She swallowed and tried to gather her courage. “Sir, I warn you, I will not be intimidated or coerced into marriage.”
“‘Tis too late to go back, Alice. We must go forward along this new course.”
“Nay, our bargain holds. I have not yet made up my mind. What is more—” Something moved in the gloom at the far end of the cave. Alice stared past Hugh’s broad shoulder.
Her spirited protest died in her throat. For a terrible instant stark fear froze her tongue. “Hugh”
He was on his feet in the blink of an eye. Steel whispered against leather as he slid his sword from its scabbard and whirled to face whatever threat had materialized behind him. An invisible cloak of battle-ready tension flowed around him.
Alice scrambled to her knees and peered past Hugh. A cowled figure emerged from the darkness of a concealed tunnel. He held a nearly extinguished torch in his hand.
“Greetings, Lord Hugh,” Calvert of Oxwick said in his rasping voice.
Hugh slammed his sword back into its scabbard. “What the devil are you doing here, monk?”
“I was at my prayers.” Calvert’s eyes burned in the shadows. “I heard voices and came to see who had invaded these caverns. I feared thieves or robbers.”
“You were at your prayers?” Hugh pulled his tunic over his head and buckled his sword belt in place with a swift, practiced motion. “In a cave?”
Calvert seemed to retreat deeper into his cowl. “I have found a place deep within these caverns where a man may pray without distractions from the outside world. A humble chamber of stone that is well suited to the mortification of the flesh.”
“Sounds an enjoyable enough place,” Hugh said dryly. “Myself, I would prefer a garden but to each his own. Fear not, monk. My betrothed and I will not intrude further on your prayers.”
He took Alice’s arm and led her out of the cavern with the same arrogant grace he might have used to escort her out of a royal audience chamber.
Calvert said nothing as he watched them leave. He remained where he was in the shadows. Stern disapproval emanated from his skeletal body in an almost palpable vapor. Alice could feel his gaze, feverish with righteous indignation, as it seared her spine.
“Do you think he saw us making love, my lord?” she asked anxiously.
“It matters not.” Hugh’s attention was clearly focused on the task of choosing a safe path down the hillside. He appeared completely unconcerned about Calvert.
“But ‘twould be most embarrassing if he were to spread gossip.”
> “If the monk has any wits, he will guard his tongue.” Hugh led Alice around a clump of scrubby bushes. “But even if he were to speak of what happened between us, who would take note? We are betrothed. Difficulty would arise only if you refused to take the final wedding vows.”
“You never lose an opportunity to pursue your goal, do you?”
“I learned long ago that determination and will are the only true means of securing my ends.” He steadied her with a sure grip as her soft boots skidded on a patch of loose pebbles. “By the bye, I must journey to London on matters of business. I shall be gone for a few days, no more than a sennight at most.”
“London?” Alice stopped short. “When do you leave?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“Oh.” Alice experienced an unexpected pang of disappointment. A whole sennight without Hugh stretched out ahead of her and it promised to be quite dull. There would be no fiery quarrels, no stolen moments of passion, no excitement.
“As my betrothed, you shall be in charge of affairs here at Scarcliffe while I am gone.”
“Me?” She stared at him in amazement.
“Aye.” Hugh smiled at her expression. “I leave everything in your hands. You will be safe enough. I shall leave Dunstan and all but two of my men here to guard the keep and the lands. Julian, my messenger, will also stay here. You may send him to me in London if you need to convey a message.”
“Aye, my lord.” Alice’s head was reeling with the sudden, unexpected weight of her new responsibilities. Hugh trusted her to look after his precious Scarcliffe.
“As we shall be married upon my return,” Hugh added casually, “you may as well spend the time preparing for the celebration of our wedding.”
“By the Saints’ eyes, sir, how many times must I tell you that I will not be wed simply because you find such a marriage efficient and convenient?”
“Believe me, madam, efficiency and convenience are not proving to be your strongest points. Oh, there is one more thing.”
“What is that, my lord?”