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“Here, friend,” he said, tapping the man’s shoulder. “If your mother’s as ugly as you are, then she must be the finest bitch in the king’s own kennels.”
The unknown man roared his outrage, the sound of which was solace to Hugh’s ears. He clenched his fists and knew with contentment that for the space of the next half hour he would be able to banish every thought of Rosaleen, and home, from his mind.
The soft stroke of fingers upon her cheek wakened Rosaleen. It was dark in the room, but the light of the moon spilling through the shutters offered some visibility. Blinking, she tried to focus but couldn’t make sense of what was before her eyes. It was broad and solid and fleshcolored, and lightly sprinkled with hair. She blinked again, and again.
“Tell me that isn’t you, Hugh Caldwell,” she whispered, “lying in my bed as naked as the day you were born.”
His fingers continued to caress her, and she could hear the smile in his voice when he replied, obediently, “It’s not me lying in your bed as naked as the day I was born.”
Slowly, her eyes moved upward to look into his face. He was smiling pleasantly, as relaxed and happy as could be, and Rosaleen forced herself to remain calm.
“What, may I ask, are you doing here?”
“Preparing to sleep, sweeting, and touching you.” His fingers ran lightly from her face down her throat and across the delicate bones of one shoulder. “Does this return memories, Rosaleen?”
It did, but the gentle touch of his hand made her tremble, and she was unable to speak.
She was as warm and soft beneath his fingers as Hugh had remembered her to be, and the stricken look in her eyes undid him.
“Yes,” he murmured, drawing closer. “Memories like this.”
His mouth closed over hers, and Hugh lost no time in pressing his tongue between her lips and into the welcoming warmth of her mouth. His arms enfolded her, careful of her healing back, and he pulled her against his painfully aroused body. She lay stiff and frightened for a long moment, and then, with a little cry, she gave way and set her arms around his neck.
“Yes, Rosaleen,” Hugh whispered, thrusting one leg between her thighs and drawing a moan from her lips. “Yes, love, like this. This is what we did with one another last night, and more. So much more. You’re remembering now, aren’t you, my sweet? You’re remembering the ways we pleasured one another.”
Rosaleen shook her head and tried to draw away from him. “No,” she murmured, unable to escape the heat of his hard body, of his mouth as it moved over her neck and shoulders, of his hands as they eagerly roamed her skin, pulling up her chemise and slipping beneath to caress her bare buttocks. He grasped her there, gently, holding her still as he rocked needily against her.
“No.” She pushed at him once more. “It was dreams. Dreams…”
“Not dreams, beautiful lady.” Hugh took one of her delicate hands and flattened it against his chest. “You touched me, and I touched you. Everywhere, love. Everywhere. Like this. Oh yes, little love, like this.” He kissed her again, deeply, and pressed her hand over his hot skin. “Remember, Rosaleen,” he commanded. “Remember the pleasure we gave one another. I didn’t take your maidenhead, but I gave you a sweet release, just as you gave me. You were so beautiful in my arms, so eager. I couldn’t help myself, darling. I couldn’t help myself.”
It was too much for Rosaleen, too overwhelming.
“Please, stop,” she begged. “Please, Hugh, don’t.”
She tugged frantically to make him release her hand, but Hugh was too lost in his passion to heed her. He dragged her hand down his body toward the place where he so desperately wanted her touch.
“Touch me, Rosaleen. Please, my beautiful sweet. Touch me with your soft little hands and take me to heaven, just as I shall take you.”
This was wrong, Rosaleen thought wildly, struggling. Wrong, wrong, wrong!
“No, Hugh! Oh God, don’t. Don’t”
He was so much stronger than she, and he was just drunk enough with both ale and passion to mistake her struggles and cries for pleasure. Gently but insistently, he wrapped Rosaleen’s fingers around him, and for just a moment Rosaleen stilled with the amazing shock of what a man felt like.
Then, frightened, overwhelmed and horrified at her lack of courage, she burst into tears.
Nothing else had penetrated Hugh’s passion-riddled brain until that moment, but her sudden tears worked on him like a bucketful of icy water. Shocked, he released her.
“Rosaleen! What—” He didn’t know what to think. One moment they’d been making sweet love and the next she was sobbing her heart out. “Did I—God’s feet, sweeting, did I hurt you? Your back? Did I…did I squeeze you too hard or…” He was at a loss, and Rosaleen only lay there, crying. He placed a tentative hand on her shoulder and she shoved it away. “Please, Rosaleen,” he pleaded. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
Rosaleen was in a fury such as she had never before known. Even her uncle, at his worst, had never enraged her so greatly. She stopped her tears just long enough to glare at the man hovering worriedly above her.
“I’ll tell you what’s wrong, you lecherous beast! I’ve been molested by the greatest bastard in King Henry’s kingdom! That’s what’s wrong!”
Hugh was so shocked that he sat up, but not fast enough to avoid the stinging slap Rosaleen gave him as she shot out of the bed.
“Molested!” he shouted indignantly. “You were as eager as I, wench! Don’t try to deny it! And don’t you ever strike me again!”
“Strike you!” she screeched. “Strike you! By, God, Hugh Caldwell, I’ll do more than strike you! I’m no tavern whore to be tumbled whenever you please! I’m a lady, you spawn of Satan! A lady!” She picked up a pillow and began to hit him with it, hard and repeatedly, while she continued raging.
“You-” whack! “—bastard! I’ll—” whack! “-teach you to—” whack! “—touch a lady in such a—” whack!
“—crude manner! You—” whack! “—beast!”
Hugh held his arms up to counter her blows.
“Dammit, Rosaleen! Cease this!” Whack! “I said cease!” whack! “Cease or I’ll—” whack! “—turn you over my—” whack! “—knee!”
“I’d like to see you—” whack! “—do it, you rutting boar!” Whack! “Better men than you—” whack! “—have tried to tame me, you hound from hell—” whack! “—but I’ll bow my knee to no man—” whack! “—save the king—” whack! “—you randy satyr!”
Something that sounded suspiciously like laughter drifted up to Rosaleen’s ears, and two long, muscular arms reached up to grasp her, despite her efforts with the pillow. Hugh got a good hold on her, then tossed her to the bed, flinging the pillow away and pinning her beneath his body.
Rosaleen fought him, freeing one hand to hit his rockhard chest. “Let me go, you lecherous goat! Let me go!”
Hugh was laughing so hard he could barely speak. “R-Rosaleen! D-don’t!” He burst into another storm of laughter. “Stop it! S-stop, my 1-lady!”
“Oh!” Rosaleen cried, outraged. “How dare you laugh at me, you foul ravisher! How dare you!” She drew up a fist and hit his solid chest again, hurting herself more than him. “I hate you!”
Hugh tried to stop laughing. He tried so very hard, yet he couldn’t help himself. And Rosaleen didn’t help. He had never seen anyone more perfectly beautiful and selfrighteous in his life than she, outraged.
“I’m sorry,” he managed to say, holding her tight even as she struggled against him. “No, ‘tis the truth I speak, Rosaleen.” He grinned into her furious face. “Last night you responded to me because you were drugged for your pain and hardly knew what you did. I assumed too much this night, thinking you would respond again just as readily. But I frightened you, did I not, my little innocent? You are but a maiden, and I have frightened you with my grown man’s desire.”
“You’re disgusting!” she said angrily. “You crawled into my bed to ravish me apurpose, even when you knew I wanted no such thing! Have you no morals at all?”
“Few,” he admitted honestly. “But I never would have taken your maidenhead, Rosaleen, I swear it. I wanted to share pleasure with you, sweeting, but I’d never do aught to hurt you.”
“You don’t think that what you were just doing hurt me?” she asked incredulously. “You were ravishing me!”
“That’s foolish,” Hugh replied, rolling away. “You’re too innocent to know what you speak of. If I’d been ravishing you, I wouldn’t have stopped, and I’d even now be mounted on your lovely body, taking my pleasure of you.” He stretched and yawned, then scratched his chest and settled beside her. “It’s over. Forget about it and get some sleep. We’ve a long day ahead of us on the morrow.”
“You can’t mean to sleep here!” she cried with disbelief, tossing off the arm that tried to crawl around her waist.
Hugh yawned again before answering. “Of course I do. Where else is there?”
She sat up. “God’s bones, man! You’ve the nerve of a devil!”
“Be quiet and go to sleep, Rosaleen.”
“Sleep! If you think that I’ll sleep in the same bed as you, Hugh Caldwell, then I pray you will think again!” Rosaleen started to get out of the bed but was stopped when a muscular arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her back onto the mattress and up against the hard body she had only minutes before been touching with her hands.
She opened her mouth to scream, but Hugh’s other hand came up and firmly, though gently, closed over it.
“Rosaleen, my sweet,” he said patiently, “we are only going to sleep. You have made yourself clear about not wanting to share any pleasures with me. I’d be a fool to force myself on such an unwilling shrew, especially when England is filled with warm and willing females who would be more than happy to lie with me. Now be quiet and go to sleep, else I’ll tie you to the bed and place a gag in your mouth.”
“You’re naught but a brute!” she huffed when he released her. “And I wish you would stop touching me!”
Hugh was reminded of how he had intimidated her earlier and felt instant remorse. Pulling his hands away, he rolled to his back and heard Rosaleen shuffle over to the far edge of the bed.
“Yes, I am,” he admitted, pushing away the desire to apologize to her yet again. He’d only known the wretched creature a few days and he’d already apologized to her more than he could remember apologizing to any other person. “And I hope you’ll keep that in mind until I’ve got you safely lodged with my brother. I warned you before we set out that I’m no gentle knight, or any kind of gentleman. I dare what I please, Rosaleen, and I take what I want. Remember that.”
A loud silence prevailed, until Rosaleen said, “I hope whoever you fought with earlier was able to match you. Mayhap you’ll have some bruises to make you miserable for a while.”
Hugh closed his eyes and smiled widely in the darkness. It would have been impossible for her not to have heard the fighting that had gone on downstairs two hours before, when he had taken on more than half the patrons in the tavern. They had pretty well destroyed the place, as usual, but Hugh had paid the innkeeper more than the trouble was worth. When it had all been over and he’d felt thoroughly relaxed, Hugh had bought drinks all around and had gotten pleasantly drunk with his newly found mates before finally coming upstairs to Rosaleen. He hadn’t meant to touch her when he had first crawled into the bed, but she had looked so sweet lying there, like an angel, that he hadn’t been able to resist.
“He was,” Hugh admitted with easy contentment, “and I will.”
“You are crazed, my lord,” she said, yawning, “and I wish you the joy of your wounds.”
“Good night, Rosaleen.”
“Good night, you beast.”
Chapter Five (#ulink_3bd6ab33-74df-5f79-839c-94f7be42da2b)
It was late the next day before Hugh finally turned their horses off the main road. They rambled along a side road for a few minutes and then stopped. In front of them, still some distance away, stood an imposing, venerable monastery, that Rosaleen knew by reputation. In fact, though she had seldom been through this area of England before, she was well aware of where they were. It would have been impossible not to know, for this land belonged to Sir Alexander Baldwin, the Lord of Gyer, who was widely known as one of King Henry’s richest and most powerful barons.
“Is this where we’ll be spending the night, then, Hugh Caldwell?” she asked, turning to look at him.
He didn’t answer, but sat stiffly atop his steed, staring at the monastery.
“Yes,” he replied at last, his voice taut.
Rosaleen wondered at the change that had come over him during the past few hours. He had wakened in a good mood that morn; had, in truth, enjoyed himself greatly with teasing her over the fact that she had curled against him for warmth during the night. But during the last several miles he had grown quiet, and even short-tempered, answering her questions with sharp replies plainly meant to tell her that he wanted to be left alone, until Rosaleen had actually wished he would start teasing her again.
Earlier, when they had passed by the small barony of Wallewyn, he had become increasingly grim, and when Rosaleen had begged that they stop at that place and rest for a short time, he had practically growled at her.
“I’ll not step foot in that damned place again,” he’d said tightly. “Ever. We’ll keep on.”
Those had been the last words he’d spoken to her until this moment.
“It is early to stop yet. Should we not press on and spend the night in Gyer?”
He shook his head. “We’ll spend the night here.”
He looked so strange that Rosaleen felt a little afraid.
“Very well, Hugh Caldwell. We’ll stay here.”
He was silent again, gazing hauntedly ahead.
Rosaleen cleared her throat. “Will we be spending the night in the middle of the road, then? Or shall we go down?”
Hugh turned to look at her, and the fire in his eyes nearly burned her to a cinder. His hands were clenched so tightly around the reins of his steed that his knuckles showed white.
“We will go, my lady, but I want you to know that the only reason I even came within a day’s ride of this place is because of you.”
He spurred his horse forward and galloped toward the monastery, leaving a stunned Rosaleen to follow. Above them, Amazon, having been loosed to feed herself an hour earlier, circled and gave her fierce cry.
Hugh rode like a demon through the monastery’s gates, causing the monks working in the surrounding fields to look at him wonderingly. Rosaleen followed more sedately, smiling and nodding politely at the bewildered men, hoping that they wouldn’t turn them away because of Hugh Caldwell’s rude behavior. When she made the gates herself she saw that he had gone straight through the courtyard and into the stables. She rode in after him and was grabbed and yanked out of her saddle before her eyes could adjust to the building’s darkness.
Hugh set her firmly on her feet.
“Go and wait for me in the gardens. I’ll take care of the horses and meet you there.”
Well! thought Rosaleen. He treated her as though she were naught but baggage!
“I’ll not be ordered about like a servant, Hugh Caldwell! And I’ll not be tossed about like a sack of grain!”
Ignoring her, he took hold of the little mare and led her toward a stall. “Go wait in the gardens for me,” he repeated. “They’re just across the courtyard and through the half gate. You’ll find them easily enough.”
Rosaleen stood her ground, glaring at him. Hugh turned, saw her there and raised his eyebrows.
“Have you gone deaf, Rosaleen? I told you to go and wait for me in the gardens.”
“I heard you!”
“Then get out of my sight, woman, and do as I say. Go on, now.” He turned his attention back to the horses.
Rosaleen huffed loudly, then stormed out of the stables with as much dignity as she possessed. Ignoring the stares of the monks in the courtyard, she strode across it to the half gate, flung it open and slammed it behind her after she walked into the gardens.
“If he thinks that I came to the gardens because he bade me do so,” she announced aloud, “then he’s an even greater idiot than I first supposed!”
Making her way down one of several paths to a bench, she angrily plopped down upon it.
“I don’t care if he is the handsomest man I’ve ever seen,” she muttered. “He’s rude and ill-mannered, and he probably thinks he’s one of God’s blessings to women!”
A cool breeze brushed her face, but Rosaleen’s fury wasn’t tempered by it.
“He’ll be sorry when he discovers who I am.” An angry, feline smile lit her face. “And I only hope I’m there to see it! By my troth, I’ll make him grovel if it’s the last thing I do. When he realizes who it is he’s insulted, he’ll be on his knees, begging my forgiveness!”
So caught up was she in her vengeful fantasies that she didn’t hear the garden gate open again, or the sound of the careful footsteps that approached her.
“Wretched beast! Brother of a pig farmer! Thinking he can treat me, the daughter of an earl, without the least bit of common decency, as though I were naught but the lowliest whore! But he’ll come to rue his behavior, I vow. He’ll…”
“Careful, daughter, lest you say words you’ll one day regret.”
Hugh! Rosaleen thought, paralyzing with mortification. He had finished with the horses more quickly than she had imagined he would. Embarrassed beyond words to have been discovered talking to herself, Rosaleen flushed and slowly raised her eyes to look at him.
