Lord Of Danger by Stuart, Anne (free ebook reader for android txt) 📗

to prepare the bridal bower, but Godfrey had done his best. There were dried rose petals in the rushes that covered the floor, perfuming the air with sweetness, and soft linen covers on the wide bed where he’d already held her. Where he would take her innocence, and leave her with… what?

He could, in fact, be kind. He was, occasionally, even if he regretted the necessity. He much preferred when people had no notion of his random charitable acts.

But Alys of Summersedge had done no harm. When he finished with her, and with Richard the Fair, he would see her safely to a convent, where she could live out her life in peace and contentment, happy in her books and the company of women.

Godfrey closed the heavy wooden door behind them as he left, and Simon looked down on his young wife. She was very small, very vulnerable.

“Do you know what happens in the marriage bed?” he asked abruptly, releasing her arm.

She stepped away from him, moving toward the bed as if in a dream. “Yes,” she said.

“And where does this expert knowledge come from? The nuns?”

She stiffened her back beneath the flowing rose colored gown. “They are learned women.”

“Not in the ways of sex.”

She blushed. He hadn’t seen her blush before—it made her pale skin glow. He wondered absently if she blushed all over her small, lush body. He wondered how long he would keep himself from finding out.

“I’ve been in plenty of farmyards,” she said with comical dignity. “I understand the mechanics. And Lady Hedwiga instructed me in proper comportment.”

He laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound in the shadowy room, but he wasn’t feeling particularly pleasant He was tense, frustrated, and angry. Angry at the woman who was willing to sacrifice herself to Grendel. Angry at himself for becoming a monster who frightened children and old men and young women. Sweet, soft young women.

“And what is proper comportment in the marriage bed, Alys?” he murmured.

“To submit.”

“How arousing.” His tone was sarcastic, but she was obviously too nervous to notice.

“I shouldn’t cry or scream, no matter how painful, how degrading and disgusting,” she continued in a voice marred only by a slight quaver. “If I close my eyes and lie very still it will soon be over. Madlen assured me that no one ever dies from it.”

He could see them, the women of Constantinople, their bodies strewn in the streets. “Madlen is wrong,” he said in a bleak voice.

It was hardly what she wanted to hear. “I could die?”

He roused himself. “No,” he said. “Because I am not going to take you.”

She blinked, staring at him, her mouth slightly opened in surprise. He wanted to kiss that mouth. He wanted to get as far away as possible from her. He wasn’t going to do either.

“You won’t?” she said breathlessly. “Or you can’t?”

He knew that his smile was far from warming. “It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you’ll lie in that bed alone tonight. I don’t sleep much in the best of times, and there’s work I have to finish. More important work than deflowering a nervous bride. Get in bed and dream of monsters, wife. And dream of noble knights to save you from devouring demons.”

“I don’t want one,” she said in a very small voice.

“Don’t want what?”

“A noble knight to rescue me.”

She was braver than he’d imagined, standing there small and proud in his tower room. Brave enough to take him, perhaps, and he took a reluctant step toward her, unable to help himself.

The sizzle of lightning skittered past the wide window through which Aidan of Montrose had made his descent, followed by a low rumble of thunder. It was far away, but Alys jumped as if she’d confronted a dragon, and he halted, both relieved and disappointed.

“And I don’t want a woman who’ll submit.”

His innocent bride looked shocked. “You want someone to fight you? You prefer rape?”

At that he did cross the space between them, cupping her face in his hands to tilt it upward. Her eyes were solemn, questioning, but she made no effort to break away. “For a wise woman you can be very stupid, Alys,” he said gently. “There is such a thing as pleasure.” He gently stroked her cheeks with his thumbs.

“Pleasure?” she echoed blankly, as if the word were in Arabic, even as her body arched towards his, unconsciously seeking him.

“Pleasure,” he said, his voice low and beguiling. “Shimmering, endless longing and delight, touch and taste and delicate wonder.” He moved his head closer, let his mouth hover over hers. “Heat and dampness and yearning,” he whispered. “An empty aching that finally explodes into a small death that is like no other.”

She stared up at him in a trance, caught by the magic of his words, the promise in his mouth. She wet her lips with a nervous tongue, still caught in his gaze. “It sounds terrifying,” she whispered finally.

“My lady,” he whispered, “it is.”

And he pulled away from her, turning his back on her without another glance, heading toward his worktable.

“Go to bed, sweet Alys. Dream of safety. I have work to do.”

He half expected her to protest. To follow him, put her hand on his shoulder, and then he would turn and pull her into his arms, lift her up onto the high table and take her there and then, amid the tumbled herbs and elements, teach her the true terror and wonder that awaited her.

But the thunder rumbled again, only a low warning, and with a muffled cry she scampered toward the bed.

There was no one to get her out of her dress, and he wasn’t about to offer. He couldn’t afford the distraction. He was too close to getting the proportions just right in the lethal sleeping draught. A few more hours of work and it would be done. And then he could decide what to do with his bride.

He had no idea what he would do with the poison. Whether he would, in truth, hand