CHAPTER FIFTEEN #2
I am now a woman, she marveled, the residue, along with the tenderness between her legs, evidence that she had changed in a profound way.
Suddenly, despite the gloom that lurked outside the grotto, it was as if the sun had broken free from the storm clouds and now shed its radiant light upon her.
And yet it was a joy seeded with a fierce yearning, for though she and Galen had been conjoined as one body—an act so intimate it defied words—she would have them be more to one another.
Have my feelings for him begun to thaw? Laoghaire wondered, startled by the notion, even as she was made hopeful by it.
Just then, Galen began to mumble in his sleep, Laoghaire able to make out the words, “I pray thee, lady.”
She smiled, glad-hearted that even in slumber they were bound to one another. Husband and wife . . . Galen and Laoghaire.
Still muttering, Galen snuggled even closer to her. “I am greatly tempted, Melisande,” he murmured.
Upon hearing that, Laoghaire’s breath caught in her throat. As though she’d just been stabbed with a dagger to the heart, her emotions underwent a sudden and dramatic shift. In that instant she was seized with an agony so starkly intense, it threatened to consume her, body and soul.
Devastated, she jerked herself free from Galen’s sleeping embrace and sat upright. To stop herself from sobbing aloud, she slapped a hand to her mouth. But when she peered down at Galen—still in sleep’s thrall, oblivious to his transgression—her heartache straightaway congealed into a blind fury.
The whoreson!
Without a care to giving offense or injury, Laoghaire pounded on Galen’s naked chest as hard as she could. “Wake up, knave!”
Galen’s eyes immediately snapped open. Just as quickly, the arm that had been wrapped around her waist flung outward toward his sword.
“Ye would dare to threaten me with a blade, ye black-hearted cur!”
Belatedly realizing that it was his wife and not an enemy who’d launched the attack, Galen removed his hand from the sword hilt. “Suffering hell, Laoghaire! Is this any way to rouse your lord husband?”
Snatching hold of her discarded chemise, Laoghaire scrambled to her feet. “Count yer blessings that I didn’t use that sword to kill ye in yer sleep.” Acutely aware that she stood before him naked as a newborn, she made haste to clothe herself.
Clearly bewildered, Galen pushed himself into a seated position. “And why would you contemplate such a thing? Did I not give you great pleasure?”
“Aye, it was great, indeed,” she replied in a deceptively sweet tone of voice. Then, the dulcet notes hardening, she glared at him and hissed, “But ye gave Melisande that very same pleasure, did ye not?”
With a muttered oath, Galen lunged to his feet. Despite his naked state, he stood with his feet planted wide and his hands balled on his hips. “Why do you mention Melisande’s name?” Galen’s eyes, pale as a winter’s moon, held her captive with an intense stare, one that demanded a response.
“’Twas not I who first made mention of the lady Melisande. ’Twas you in your sleep,” she warbled unsteadily, having yet to recover from his heart-wrenching betrayal. “From what I could gather, ye find her a great temptation.”
A shocked look flashed across Galen’s face, only to vanish in the next instant, replaced with an implacable expression.
As he peered intently at her, Laoghaire suddenly felt unkempt and disheveled, and she could only assume that with her hair falling wildly about her shoulders she resembled the devil’s trull.
In the intervening silence that arose between them, she hurriedly reached for her kirtle and pulled it over her head.
Out of the corner of her eye she noticed that Galen also began to dress himself.
“You cannot blame me for what transpires whilst I am asleep,” Galen said at last, without a trace of remorse in his voice. “That is a realm over which no man has control.”
That he neither denied nor confirmed the accusation made Laoghaire all the more suspicious.
Fumbling with the laces on her kirtle, she said, “I’ll grant ’tis impossible to bide yer tongue when ye’re asleep. Nevertheless, ye spoke verily.”
Though he made no reply, the slight but perceptible stain of color on Galen’s upper cheekbones was answer enough. Sucking in a deep breath, he ran a hand through his hair, the age-old gesture of male exasperation.
“Lies are the mortar that bind every word ye speak,” Laoghaire bristled, certain he was withholding the truth from her.
Having already donned his braies, chausses and undertunic, Galen grabbed hold of his boots and proceeded to yank them onto his feet. “What lie have I told?”
“’Tis what ye haven’t said, the unspoken lie, that speaks volumes,” she informed him, as she likewise donned her boots.
Galen pulled his black tunic and surcoat over his head. “You would actually blight our passion because of a few injudicious words spoken whilst in the throes of sleep?”
“That is all ye care about, satisfying yer passion. Ye’re naught but a beast!” she hissed through her teeth, her gaze set firmly on the rampant red lion emblazoned on the front of his surcoat.
Plainly taking offense, Galen’s eyes narrowed. “I am a man! Flesh and blood! I feel pain and hunger, as do we all.”
“Pain, hunger and lust,” she jeered. “That makes ye no different from any animal that roams the forest. It certainly doesn’t make ye a man possessed of one shred of integrity. All ye know is how to slaughter men and lay waste to castles.”
“And lest you’ve already forgotten, I know how to lay waste to you as well, lady wife,” Galen said mockingly while he buckled his sword belt with an efficient and practiced motion.
“Indeed, I’ve heard it said that ultimately all love comes down to ruin or rapture.
’Tis obvious which path you have chosen. ”
“Hah! Do ye mean to say ye love me?” she taunted.
“Nay, lady wife. I said no such thing,” Galen replied in a flat, emotionless voice. “And I find it confounding that you would even ask such a question.”
Pained that he would dangle the word “love” before her, only to yank it away at the last, Laoghaire glared at him accusingly. “’Tis a bitter grist ye grind, Galen de Ogilvy.”
“I will grind whatever I must.”
“And the devil take anyone who stands in yer way, including yer wife.”
“God’s wounds! If I could distil your magnificent rage, I wonder what it is that I would find at the bottom of the vessel,” Galen snarled as he picked up her fur mantle and handed it to her.
Laoghaire snatched the mantle from his grasp and flung it around her shoulders.
She then stormed over to the entrance of the grotto.
Her emotions swinging wildly between fury and despair, she peered at the grove, but the entire landscape was soaked in a sodden mist and she could barely distinguish trees from rocks.
Never in her life had she felt as betrayed as when she heard Galen murmur Melisande’s name in his sleep. In that horrifying moment she knew with heartbreaking certainty that Galen preferred the golden-haired Melisande, the woman who’d been his first choice for a bride.
I am nothing more than a convenient receptacle for his lust.
Now, with their marriage vows finally consummated, Galen was free to return to his ladylove. And though Laoghaire told herself that she cared naught, in truth, it felt as if she were about to be swept away on a rough tide.
Refusing to surrender to that agonized swell, she turned back around. Her chin angled defiantly, she said to Galen in a clear and steady voice, “I demand that yer ladylove leave Castle Airlie.”
“Melisande cannot return to her home as it was destroyed by the English,” Galen stated matter-of-factly, making no attempt whatsoever to deny that Melisande was his “ladylove.”
Although she was greatly pained by that blatant omission, Laoghaire was nevertheless determined to exercise her rights as countess. “I didn’t say she had to return to her home. I said that she had to leave Castle Airlie. ’Tis my home now and I refuse to have her sleep under the same roof.”
“I pledged my protection to Melisande,” Galen replied in a measured voice. “She is naught but a defenseless woman.”
“Defenseless she may be, but she still has designs on my husband,” Laoghaire was quick to point out.
“And do you think I haven’t noticed that the eyes of every man at Castle Airlie glaze over with lust whenever you walk into the great hall,” Galen retorted.
“Forsooth, there’s not a man in the whole of my demesne who hasn’t dreamt of bedding you.
Maybe I should expel every man over the age of twelve to remove the temptation from you. ”
“Do not thrust yer sins upon me,” she spat at Galen, her heart rent in two. “Unlike ye, I have never been tempted, nor has my gaze ever wandered.”
It was the last thing Laoghaire said before she charged out of the cave and ran headlong into the gloom.