Fairest of Them All (Once Upon A Time #3)

Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8

The knight’s husky promise coupled with his possessive touch sent a jolt of silken lightning through Holly. A rush of dismay followed. She’d learned from hazardous experience on the very patch of grass beneath their feet how hard and unrelenting the muscled length of his body could be. Given Elspeth’s dire description of the marriage act, she sincerely doubted she would survive such a homage.

As if to test Gavenmore’s resolve, Nathanael said, “You may honor your bride with a kiss.” The priest’s lips twitched with mischief. Why the rascal was enjoying himself! Holly thought, shooting him a glare.

The knight leaned down to shrink the considerable distance between their heights, closing his eyes when his lips were still a full two feet from her face.

An inopportune frisson of anticipation danced down Holly’s spine. I might yet bestow my kisses on a stranger, but you can be assured, sir, that I will never again bestow them on you . Mocked by the memory of her own words, she puckered her lips, terrified they would betray her by melting beneath his persuasion.

Her caution proved unnecessary. His lips brushed her brow in the most chaste of pecks. Attributing the stinging of her cheeks to the nettles with which Nathanael had brushed them, she bobbed a bumbling curtsy. “You do me honor, sir.”

His expression was grave, but not unkind. “I am your husband now. You may call me Austyn and I shall call you Ivy.”

“You may if you like,” she said, but he was already turning away to discuss the dispensation of her dowry with her papa. Bewildered by the unfamiliar sensation of being snubbed, she added faintly, “but it’s not my name.”

Holly was dismayed to learn that her husband wanted to depart Tewksbury within the hour. She had hoped to spend her wedding night beneath the canopy of her papa’s protection. He might not heed her cries for mercy, she thought spitefully, but he would at least have to suffer hearing them.

Austyn was dismayed to learn that his wife expected both her nurse and her priest to accompany them. He could stomach the nurse, although he thought his bride a bit old for such indulgences, but the priest was another matter. Even mounted on a humble donkey for the journey, a distinct sneer curled the man’s upper lip. There hadn’t been a priest at Gavenmore for over two decades, a lack that suited Austyn well. What use had the damned for vain promises of God’s mercy?

As Carey led their animals into the outer bailey beneath the earl’s watchful eye, Austyn’s bride announced, “I shall require a litter.”

Austyn exchanged a droll look with his man-at-arms. Her papa had doubtlessly carted her about the countryside in a curtained litter to avert ridicule, but no man would dare mock her now that she was his wife. Not without risking both his teeth and his life.

“I fear that will be impossible,” he patiently explained. “There is no one to carry a litter. Only my man and I.” The image of such a frivolous contraption jolting over the craggy hills and dense forests of his homeland almost made him smile.

Holly rolled her eyes skyward, wondering how long her husband was going to persist in his stubborn pretense that the nearby woods weren’t teeming with hordes of Welshmen just itching to rush out and cut their throats at the first sign of treachery.

“How would you have me travel then?” she asked, enunciating each word precisely, as if addressing a child.

“On horseback, of course,” he replied, echoing her condescending tone.

Holly cast the horses a dubious look. Grazing beside the monstrous steeds that belonged to Sir Austyn and his man were four pack animals, their panniers swollen with her father’s gold. She could hardly explain that her papa had only allowed her to travel chaperoned by armed escort in the stifling confines of a litter to ward off the lustful gazes of potential abductors. She had hoped for the privacy of such a conveyance where she might unbind her throbbing breasts for a few precious hours.

She shot her papa a pleading glance. He turned his bulbous nose skyward, informing her plainly that there would be no help from that quarter.

She forced a disdainful sniff. “I do not ride.”

Gavenmore folded his arms over his chest. “Then you may ride with me.”

Holly started for the nearest pack horse. “I shall learn.”

Even more alarming than the prospect of mounting a horse for the first time was the prospect of spending hours cuddled against her husband’s imposing chest. Of feeling his wintergreen-scented breath tease her naked nape or worse yet, being forced to embrace him from behind while the sensitive peaks of her poor, tortured breasts strained against their bindings. Such proximity would make it nigh impossible to sustain her disguise. Or her virtue.

She gingerly approached the smallest of the mounts. Compared with Gavenmore’s fire-belching dragon of a destrier, the sorrel looked tiny, but as Holly drew nearer, its barreled chest seemed to swell to intimidating proportions.

She stretched out a hand toward the reins, wishing she had an apple or a carrot instead of only the succulent temptation of her fingers. “Here, horsie,” she crooned. “Nice horsie.”

The snort that came from behind her was definitely not equine in nature.

As she seized the reins, the horse tossed its snowy mane with a whicker of warning and took several prancing steps away from her. Hindered by her cumbersome skirts, Holly stumbled after it, refusing to surrender her hard-won grip.

An unladylike grunt escaped her as she grabbed the leather pommel and sought to heave herself into the saddle. The horse reared, spilling her into the dirt and giving her reason to be thankful for her cushioned backside. Ignoring the suspicious noises from behind her, she climbed to her feet, brushing off her rump.

She approached the horse again, squaring her jaw in determination. There hadn’t been a male born she couldn’t charm or outwit and that included this cantankerous gelding. Anticipating his prancing retreat, she seized the pommel and threw herself headlong over his back.

The horse moved nary an inch. Holly landed draped over the saddle on her stomach, giving her a startling view of the horse’s underbelly. No wonder both charm and wit had failed her. The horse wasn’t a gelding, but a mare—a conniving female like herself. She caught the chaplet of bluebells before it could be trampled beneath the beast’s fickle hooves.

She had anticipated Nathanael’s dry applause. What she had not anticipated were the strong hands that closed around her waist, lifting her until she perched sideways on the saddle, her skirts flowing prettily over the mare’s flanks. As those hands lingered against the relative slenderness of her waist, she forgot to breathe.

Gavenmore frowned up at her, his eyes narrowed to frosty slits. “You’re lighter than you look, my lady. No heavier than a thistle.”

Scrambling away from his touch with such haste she almost tumbled off the other side of the horse, Holly clung to the pommel and her wits with equal desperation. “’Tis only your superior strength that makes it seem so, sir.”

Gavenmore looked less than convinced by her flattery, but it seemed to appease him for the moment.

Holly perched rigidly on the saddle while her belongings were divided among the remaining horses. She had packed little, bringing only the gowns Elspeth had spent the afternoon frantically altering. After all, if her aim was to repulse her husband, what use had she for golden fillets to adorn the cream of her brow? Embroidered girdles to emphasize the slimness of her waist? Ivory combs to tame the raven silk of her hair? Amethyst brooches to complement the color of her eyes? She sighed wistfully.

Her one concession to vanity was the tiny bottle of myrrh she’d tucked into her stocking, her one concession to sentimentality the gilded hand mirror her mother had given her on her fifth birthday.

The stab of regret she felt for abandoning her treasures was blunted by a keener grief as her father approached to bid her farewell.

He grasped her ankle. She leaned down, bracing herself for a hissed rebuke, a final denouncement of the folly that had brought them to this grim pass.

He pressed his mouth to her ear, his majestic voice reduced to a conspiratory rumble. “Don’t rely solely on your disguise to repel him, girl. Just be yourself.”

With that enigmatic advice, he slapped her mount on the rump, sending it into a smart trot. Holly had to snatch at both pommel and reins to keep her seat, but she could not resist stealing a last longing glance over her shoulder at her papa. As he lifted his squat arm in a salute, she would have given even her precious bottle of myrrh to know if it was his old familiar twinkle, the glimmer of tears, or perhaps a bit of both reflected in his misty eyes.

Holly scowled at her husband’s back, envying the ease with which he sat his massive mount. Instead of flopping aimlessly in the saddle with each spine-jarring jolt of the horse’s hooves, he rode with fluid grace, at one with the beast’s loping stride like some legendary centaur of old. She frowned, trying to remember from Nathanael’s teachings if centaurs were given to ravishing nymphs. Or was it satyrs?

Stealing a look around to make sure no one was watching, she slipped a leg over the sorrel’s back to ride astride. No one commented upon her change of position.

Holly was so accustomed to being ogled that having everyone avoid her eyes seemed a curious sort of freedom. Elspeth stared straight ahead, convinced the Welshman would behead them all and leave their bodies rotting in the forest if he discovered their trickery. Gavenmore and his man presumably could not bear the sight of her.

Only Nathanael spared her a furtive glance, tapping the underside of his chin to remind her to tilt her face toward the remaining rays of the afternoon sun. He had assured her that all men found skin tinted by sunlight coarse and repugnant. Holly obediently tipped her head back. She was willing to do almost anything to avoid the future necessity of torturing her tender skin with nettles. She soaked up the unfamiliar sensation of warmth on her face with a surprising thirst.

As the sun sank and the moon rose, lacing the meadows with a filigree of dew, Holly’s exhaustion grew. The tingling of her rump had long ago subsided to numbness. Her bound breasts ached with every plodding step of her mount. Yet Gavenmore showed no sign of halting their party for the night. When her eyelids grew too heavy to support, she slumped over the pommel, unable to summon even a ghost of pride to care if she tumbled off on her cropped little head.

Gavenmore and the man she had heard him address as Carey had slowed until her horse’s nose was practically nudging their mounts’ rumps. She heard Carey’s mutter through a fog of stupor.

“God’s blood, Austyn, are we going to ride all night?”

Her husband’s answer was lower pitched, mercifully inaudible.

“… best to throw up her skirts and have done with it.” Holly knew his man’s grim reply should have caused her alarm, but was too weary to remember why. “… all women…the same in the dark…”

“That’s where you’re wrong, lad. I know at least one woman I would never mistake for another. Not in a thousand years. Not even if I were blind.”

Holly sighed, the unrequited hunger in her husband’s voice stirring her own melancholy. Her papa had raised her to be little more than an exquisite trophy, not the sort of woman who could inspire ardor in a man like Gavenmore. As she nodded her way back into fitful sleep, she felt a reluctant pang of envy for the woman bold enough to lay claim to her husband’s volatile heart.

A rueful smile touched Austyn’s lips as he gazed up at his sleeping bride in the moonlight. Although her mount had been rooting beneath the bracken for nearly a half hour, she still slumped over the pommel, the shriveled chaplet of bluebells drooping over the tip of her nose.

A combination of admiration and guilt assailed him. She had warned him that she did not ride, yet sheer determination had kept her seated during the punishing trek he’d forced upon them all. ’Twas not even her frailty that had prompted him to call a halt, but the fear her aged maidservant might teeter off her mount and break a bone.

He reached up to pry her stiff fingers from the reins. Perhaps it wasn’t determination that had sealed her grip, he thought ruefully, but fear. Perhaps she dreaded sharing his tent as much as he dreaded sharing hers. Ah, well, there was little help for that now. While Austyn had tended the other horses, Carey had pitched the tent in the heart of the pine copse, then retreated a discreet distance to make camp with her servants.

As Austyn drew her limp body from the saddle, he noted with amusement that somewhere along the grueling journey she had chosen to straddle the horse, proving herself not only determined, but sensible. Perhaps his homely little bride had more to commend her than he realized. God knew his superstitious folk could use a hearty dose of common sense.

He folded her into the cup of his outstretched arms, marveling once again at her scant weight. The spongy breadth of her hips and bottom did not encumber him as it should have. As he started for the tent, she nuzzled her cheek into the hollow beneath his chin. Austyn scowled to find himself seized once again by that inexplicable urge to protect, to shelter, and defend what was his own.

His grip tightened from protective to possessive as the cowled priest emerged from the shaggy boughs and planted himself in their path.

“Good eve, sir.” The pious intent of the man’s clasped hands was belied by the shrewd glint in his eyes. “I’ve come to hear my mistress’s eventide prayers. ’Tis a nightly ritual that gives her much comfort.”

Never one to be intimidated by the posturing of priests, Austyn nodded down at the cozy bundle in his arms. “As you can see, your mistress is quite comfortable as she is.” He continued forward, forcing the priest to scramble out of his way. Just before reaching the tent, he turned and said mildly, “Don’t trouble yourself after tonight, Brother. I’m her husband now. I’ll give her all the comfort she requires at eventide.”

Austyn ducked into the tent only to find himself the victim of another ambush. Damn Carey and his poet’s soul anyway! His man-at-arms had used the scant time allotted him to transform the modest tent into a sensual bower fit for a sultan bent on deflowering a harem of twittering brides.

A single torch spilled forth a buttery puddle of light that stopped just short of illuminating the makeshift bed. Austyn wryly suspected Carey had created the effect less to achieve an air of mystery than to spare him the sight of his naked bride.

As he knelt to deposit her on the crimson drape cushioned by a generous layer of pine needles, he nearly groaned to discover his friend had gone to the trouble of scattering petals of wild heartsease across the cool samite. Their heady aroma mocked him. His heart had known little ease since pledging itself against his will to the beauty in the garden.

Had she been the woman in his arms this night, the tent would indeed have been an enchanted bower of delight until the dawn. He would have called a halt to their journey hours ago and loved her for the first time while the setting rays of the sun played pink and gold against the tent walls. He would have plucked the fragile petals of heartsease from her sweat-dampened skin with his teeth, tasting and caressing every succulent inch of the flesh beneath.

He would have captured her breathless cries of pleasure with his mouth, muffled them with his tongue. He would have wedged himself within her virgin’s body, thrusting deep and hard until he coaxed from her beautiful lips a vow that no other man would ever—

Austyn bit off a savage oath. What more potent reminder did he need that the sensual spell that enslaved him would have inevitably led to his destruction? Not even in his fantasies could he be free of the jealousy that gnawed his soul. As if sensing the sudden violence of his grip, his bride stirred in his arms, a fretful spasm passing over her puckish face.

Ruthlessly ignoring the demanding throb of his arousal, he laid her on the silken nest. Her lips parted in a drowsy sigh of contentment. Puzzled, Austyn leaned forward, sniffing the air. How was it that her breath could be so sweet when her teeth were so foul? He ran his tongue over the straight, blunt edge of his own teeth, wondering if she would be offended by a gift of a carved twig with which to clean them.

She looked terribly defenseless with her sparse lashes shadowing her blotched cheeks, her small fists curled as if to ward off some unseen attack. Their bitten-to-the-quick nails stirred his conscience, yet he could not resist the peculiar temptation of her hair. He stretched out his hand, then drew it back, surprised to find it unsteady.

“She’s your wife, you fool,” he muttered. “You have every right to touch her.”

Touch her he did, running his palm over the close-cropped contours of her skull only to learn that her hair felt less like the shorn fleece of a lamb than the downy fluff of a baby duck. Oddly charmed by the discovery, he chuckled, rubbing a feathery lock between thumb and forefinger.

A faint whimper of distress warned him. He slowly lowered his gaze to find his bride gaping up at him, trembling like a fawn beneath his guilty hand.