CHAPTER TWELVE #2
“If only I had restrained myself,” he muttered, well aware that his unruly lust had been the catalyst for what followed.
Forced into celibacy, his need for his wife’s touch had been too great to bear.
And because of that, all of the good will he’d accumulated with the gifting of the jennet had been squandered in one explosive, passionate interlude.
Not that I am to blame. ’Twas Laoghaire who dared to broach the forbidden subject of annulment. Exhibiting a surprising amount of cunning, she tried to hold him hostage to his carnal lust, and thereby force him to acquiesce to her demands.
Raising the tankard to his lips, Galen took several deep swallows before he slammed the vessel down on the table.
“Suffering hell,” he grunted.
He would not—he could not—put the marriage asunder.
The union between Clan MacKinnon and the House of Ogilvy had been ordered by the king to strengthen the shaky alliance between the Highland clans and the noble families of Norman descent.
As the king’s vassal, Galen was sworn to obey and give fealty. It was as simple as that.
Admittedly, his affairs had been less complicated before Laoghaire entered his life. Although, if he were to be completely honest with himself, his life had also been rather lackluster, his days bleeding one into the other with little to excite his interest.
And then Laoghaire MacKinnon rode through the castle gates, a flame-haired Valkyrie who made every other woman pale in comparison.
“Christ above! ’Tis like an empty room without her.” Peering downward, Galen saw that even the two wolfhounds at his feet appeared woebegone on account of Laoghaire’s absence.
Nearly as desolate as the dogs, Galen began to absently fiddle with his knife, tapping the blade against the edge of his plate.
For some baffling reason, despite his sexual release earlier in the day, he still craved Laoghaire’s touch, her kisses.
Her smiles. To his ire, he found himself yearning for Laoghaire in myriad ways.
Long years ago he’d learned to control his sexual desires, refusing to think with his cock as some men did.
But now he found that a good many of his thoughts revolved around the bedding of his wife.
In truth, he yearned to lay her upon their marriage bed and make love to her until they both collapsed, made bleary-eyed and exhausted by passion.
I do not like having these feelings, he ruminated. Feelings exist for but a moment, and then the moment passes.
“So, why has it not yet passed?” he growled as he jabbed his knife blade into the apple that protruded from the roasted boar’s open mouth.
Earlier, when he was in the tub, he should have ordered Laoghaire from the bedchamber so he could have brought himself to orgasm. While it was a practice he preferred not to engage in, there were times when a man must discharge his seed or go mad.
But he had wanted—nay, needed—Laoghaire to fondle him. And when she brought him to orgasm, it had been so powerful that for several moments it felt as though he’d been transported to another place and time, and that the only thing keeping him tethered to the world was Laoghaire’s blue-eyed gaze.
While Laoghaire may not have come to the marriage an unopened bud, it didn’t detract from the fact that he desired her above all others.
Willing to overlook the fact that she wasn’t a virgin, he had every intention of making his lady wife forget her Highland lover.
Strangely enough, though, her shy modesty almost made him believe that Laoghaire was a virgin.
But, alas, the proof of it is not there, he reminded himself.
Suddenly hearing one of the troubadours begin to sing a popular ballad about a knight who failed to gain the love of his lady fair, Galen clenched his teeth.
I wooed my lady fair with gifts and compliments, and still she spurned me. Although he suspected that events might have unfolded differently had he not forsaken the rituals of courtly love and begged Laoghaire to milk his manroot.
“Why don’t they sing a song about that?” he grumbled into his tankard. “They could call it Led Astray by One’s Prick.”
Growing more vexed with each passing moment, Galen watched, disgusted, as Father Giroldus tossed a bone into the rushes before reaching for another capon. The rotund cleric then cast a withering glance at Laoghaire’s empty chair.
At seeing the direction of the priest’s gaze, Galen mouthed a silent curse. In the next instant, catching his squire’s attention, he brusquely motioned Piers to approach the high table.
“Go find my countess and bring her to me,” he ordered in a blunt tone.
“Use whatever means necessary to force her compliance. Drag her by the hair, if you must,” he added.
Laoghaire’s absence had annoyed him to such an extent that he didn’t care how she arrived in the great hall, only that she did so.
The young squire’s Adam apple bobbed in his throat as he gulped in a breath of air. Clearly at a loss for words, he jerkily nodded his head before he turned on his heel and bustled toward the door.
Leaning back in his chair, Galen folded his arms over his chest, confident that his lady wife would soon take her place at his side.
Pleased with his decision to force the issue, he watched as a band of jongleurs suddenly entered the great hall.
Itinerant entertainers, they made their living traveling from castle to castle.
Within moments—to the delight of the assembled throng— there were acrobats nimbly tumbling about, a juggler who had a talent for catching a ball in a cup balanced on his forehead, and one jongleur, the man attired in a bright yellow tunic, who began to sing a bawdy tune while he strolled amongst the guests.
His mood having vastly improved, Galen suddenly took an interest in the festivities; he even smiled warmly at Melisande as she approached the baldachin.
“How fare thee, Lady Melisande?” he said in greeting, gesturing for her to seat herself on the vacant stool to the right of him.
Attired in a rose-colored gown with tightly-fitted sleeves, laced on either side with gold cord, the blonde beauty appeared as fresh as a spring bloom. Having discarded her usual white wimple, Melisande seemed to Galen’s eyes, not as the widow she was, but as a “lady fair.”
Presenting him with a silver goblet, Melisande said in a sweet, dulcet-toned voice, “I have brought you some spiced wine, my lord.
About to inform her that he preferred to drink ale that evening—for the simple reason that it was Laoghaire’s favorite beverage—Galen thought better of his reply at the last. Not wanting to insult the lady, he accepted the goblet with a murmured word of thanks.
“Are you not hungry for food, my lord?”
Galen momentarily frowned, thinking her inquiry oddly phrased. Casting a disinterested glance at his empty plate, he mumbled, “Er, apparently not.”
“Perhaps you hunger for something else, then?”
Intuiting that they were discussing two entirely different matters, Galen cleared his throat before he abruptly said, “How fare thee, Lady Melisande?” Belatedly realizing that he’d already asked that question, he snatched hold of the wine goblet and raised it to his lips.
Melisande peered at him with what could only be called an adoring expression. “My thoughts are all for you, my lord.”
Upon hearing that, Galen somewhat guiltily stole a glance at the woman seated beside him. He was very much aware that, had it not been for the king’s decree, Melisande would now be seated to the other side of him, in the chair reserved for the countess of Angus.
Just then, the jongleur who was garbed in the gaudy yellow tunic approached the high table. Strumming a gittern, he began to sing a popular tune.
For I love you so much, truly,
that one could sooner dry up the deep sea
and hold back its waves
than I could restrain myself from loving you; for my thoughts,
my memories, my pleasures
and my desires are perpetually
of you, whom I cannot leave or even briefly forget.
“The song speaks of a particular type of love,” Melisande remarked.
“’Tis not the love between husband and wife, but that shared by a knight and his lady.
” Melisande looked Galen directly in the eyes.
Within those green depths there was a seductive promise, one that he’d never before seen.
“Indeed, I have heard it said that it is impossible for love to be shared between husband and wife.”
“Yea, I have heard the same,” Galen said in a circumspect tone of voice, wondering at her motive.
“That is because lovers give to each other freely. Whereas wedded spouses are duty-bound in regards to one another. Thus, true love can only be found outside the bounds of marriage.”
Confounded, Galen said, “I would have you speak plainly, lady. Why do you make mention of love?”
Smiling coyly, Melisande slid a hand across the top of his right thigh, coming to a halt only a few inches from his groin.
So great was his surprise that Galen’s entire body jerked.
“I would be more than happy, my lord, to bestow upon you the gift of mercy,” Melisande demurred, suggestively dropping her gaze to the hand still resting upon his thigh.
The gift of mercy. Galen had heard far too many minstrels sing of that particular “gift” not to know that it had little to do with mercy and everything to do with acts that were explicitly carnal in nature.
Taken aback, the lady’s modest tone at great odds with the brazen placement of her hand, Galen peered intently at Melisande.
A delicately fashioned woman, Melisande Jardin was possessed of small, perfectly shaped breasts and a pair of boyishly slim hips.
With her lily-white complexion, vermillion stained lips, and arched brows that emphasized a huge pair of green eyes she was the embodiment of feminine beauty.
At least by the standards set by those poets who specialized in the ballads of courtly love.