Charming the Prince Part 20

Bannor relinquished his white-knuckled grip on the stone, and slowly turned to face her. "Idle gossip, my lady, coaxed from the treacherous throat of someone who is surely not a friend, but a foe."

Despite the intensity of his gaze, Willow refused to retreat. "And is it also idle gossip that a woman died in a meadow not far from here? That she froze to death after your father branded her a wh.o.r.e, and ordered his men to cast both her and her innocent child out into a blizzard?"

If not for the rhythmic twitching of the muscle in his jaw, Bannor might have been carved from ice himself. "That child was no innocent, my lady. He had already spent countless nights huddled in the cold outside the door of his mother's cottage, while she took a succession of grunting, stinking strangers to her bed. Even though it made him gag, he had learned to choke down every bite of moldy bread she gave him, knowing just how much it had cost her."

Bannor turned back to the battlement, his profile as harsh as the snow-capped crags of the distant mountains. "When she died, I swore that all of this would one day be mine. I only wish my father could have lived long enough to see that day come."

Willow stroked his rigid forearm. "Perhaps if he had, you wouldn't have been waging war against him all these years. Tell me, Bannor, have you ever slain a foe who did not wear his leering face?"

Bannor's dry chuckle held no humor at all. " 'Tis not his face that haunts me, but hers. She is the one I cannot forgive."

Willow knew then that as terrible as the story had been, Netta had spared her the worst of it. "She loved him, didn't she?" she asked in a choked whisper.

"She adored him. She was only fifteen when he seduced her, and she never stopped believing that he'd come back for her someday. Never accepted that he had a girl just like her in every village within a hundred leagues of Elsinore." The bitterness in his voice ripened. "She used to tell me what a fine man my father was. How generous! How kind! How n.o.ble! When she was forced to take up whoring, she wept not because she had sold her body and soul for a crust of bread, but because she feared she would no longer be worthy of him." Bannor flashed Willow a look that was both entreaty and warning. "Her love was a sickness of the heart. And in the end, it killed her."

With a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach, Willow realized that the deadly weapons he had collected through the years, the gleaming shields that adorned his walls, had all been painstakingly chosen to make him invulnerable to the poisoned arrow that had felled his mother. He had spent the years since she died armoring his own heart against every threat.

Including her.

It was Willow's turn to clutch the embrasure, to gaze out over the barren beauty of the snow-shrouded meadows while the wind whipped her unbound curls from her stinging eyes. "I can certainly understand why you want no more children of your own," she said softly. "If word continues to spread that the mighty lord of Elsinore will claim any babe left on his doorstep, we'll soon be overrun with the little imps."

"We?" Bannor echoed softly, as if afraid he had misheard her.

She could feel him behind her, his warmth as palpable as a caress. She had not realized how cold she was until that moment. Once Willow had been arrogant enough to pity Bannor's first two wives for contenting themselves with less than his love. Now she felt only a strange kinship with them.

She swung around to face him, her chin steady, her eyes dry. "You're a man of your word, Bannor of Elsinore. You're not given to uncontrollable rages, strong drink, or blasphemy. A woman can ask no more than that of her husband. If you have naught but crumbs of affection to offer me, then I shall make do as I always have."

"Is that all you think I have to offer you? Crumbs?" Bannor lifted his hand to her cheek, his eyes darkening with a fierce hunger of their own. "On the contrary, my lady. If you dine at my table, I can promise you a banquet sweeter than any you've ever imagined."

Willow held her breath as his mouth descended on hers. His warm, rough tongue dipped into her mouth, offering her not just a sip of ambrosia, but a taste of heaven itself. She curled her hand around his nape, clinging helplessly as he swept her up into his arms.

Bannor's mouth never left hers. Not when he carried her down the narrow flight of stairs that led to her tower. Not when he blindly kicked the door shut behind them. Not when he lowered her to her feet, unfastened the catch of her cloak, and shoved it from her shoulders. Only when he fisted his hands in her kirtle and began to draw it over her head was he forced to surrender her lips. He did so with the most heartfelt of groans.

Willow should have been shivering in her thin chemise, but it seemed both of them were immune to the chill in the fireless chamber. As Bannor bore her back against the bedpost, his powerful body trembled all over, burning with the same fever that threatened to consume her.

"I can't bear it when you cry," he muttered, seeking to kiss the tearstains from her cheeks.

"Not even when I'm weeping for your touch?" Willow murmured against his ear, seized by a spirit of boldness.

Not even in her boldest fantasy would Willow have dared to imagine that Bannor would drop to his knees at her feet, ease up her chemise, and seek a taste of those pearly tears. She gasped as he used his broad thumbs to part the softness of her nether curls, exposing her to the silken wonder of his tongue.

Her first instinct was to clench her thighs together, to prevent the both of them from committing a sin so deliriously shocking it must surely be mortal.

Bannor pressed his stubbled cheek to the pale cream of her thigh, his voice raw with longing. "Please, Willow..."

Willow knew he was not a man to beg. Nor a man to kneel before anyone but his king. But he was willing to humble himself so he might exalt her. By generously granting her such sway over him, he rendered her powerless to deny him anything. Stroking her fingers through his hair, she allowed him to coax her thighs apart, then pressed her eyes shut, too shy to bear the primal beauty of his dark head between her legs.

As Bannor took his first sip from her br.i.m.m.i.n.g chalice, Willow was seized by a pleasure so piercing she feared she might swoon. She fisted her hands in his hair, whimpering his name with her every breath. He cupped her naked bottom in his palms, making it clear that she could beg and writhe all she wanted, but to no avail. With the rigid bedpost at her back and his hot mouth pressed against her, there was no escaping the unholy rapture of his kiss.

His tongue flickered over her, probing the delicate sh.e.l.l of her flesh as if to seek a priceless treasure. When he finally found the glistening pearl tucked within, he suckled it until her head rolled back and her knees crumpled. His fingers dug into the soft flesh of her b.u.t.tocks as shudder after shudder of raw ecstasy wracked her.

When they subsided, Willow could only collapse over his shoulder, clinging as if to keep from drowning in a fathomless sea. Their sin had indeed proved mortal. She had died in his arms, and he had stolen her soul as surely as he had stolen her heart.

"Not enough, sweeting," Bannor whispered fiercely against her quivering belly. "Not this time. This time I promised you more."

Rising, he drew off her chemise and heaved her back on the feather mattress, then dragged his shirt over his head, his expression as relentless as if he was preparing to march into battle. Willow reached for him with both hands, unable to resist the primitive allure of his battle-scarred chest. Kicking off his boots, he fell on her like a starving man, devouring her lips, her throat, her throbbing nipples. Before she could catch her breath, his fingers were sifting through the damp curls at the juncture of her thighs, gliding through the warm honey his tongue had melted from her womanhood.

He dipped his longest finger in and out of that virgin hollow, causing exquisite shivers of antic.i.p.ation to wrack her womb. Without even realizing it, Willow began to arch her hips in a rhythm as old as time itself, inviting him to go deeper, entreating him to be rougher, panting with a need she could barely comprehend.

But Bannor seemed to know exactly what she needed. Even as he was kissing her mouth with a sinuous tenderness that made her want to weep, he was joining another finger to the first. He pressed them both deep within her, then began to circle that throbbing pearl with the callused pad of his thumb. A broken sob escaped her as the pleasure crested without warning, leaving her limp with delight, yet strangely unfulfilled.

She opened her misty eyes to find Bannor resting on his back beside her, with one arm flung over his eyes. "Bannor?" she whispered.

He grunted a reply, but did not lower his arm.

Willow rolled to her side and began to stroke his chest, thinking how curious it was to be naked while he was still half-clothed, yet feel no hint of shyness. "I know how you hate these frank discussions, but if we're to stay wed and don't want any more children, perhaps you'd best share how you kept all the women who weren't your wives from breeding."

" 'Twas never a concern. I wasn't willing to risk scattering a bunch of b.a.s.t.a.r.ds like myself about the countryside. I didn't want some son or daughter I'd never met to grow up despising me."

Willow's hand froze in its motion. "Do you mean to tell me that when you wed Mary, you were a-"

Bannor lowered his arm to glare at her. "If you laugh, I shall pet.i.tion the church for that annulment. After I strangle you."

But Willow's smile was one of bemused wonder. "And in the years since Margaret died, you've never...?"

"Not even once. Although G.o.d knows I've wanted to." His glare deepened to a full-blown scowl. "Never more than the first time I laid eyes on you, my lady."

Willow's heart melted at his reluctant confession. Her hand skated down his abdomen, making his taut flesh ripple in reaction. "Netta told me of another trick we might try."

He c.o.c.ked an eyebrow at her. "Do you really think 'twould be wise to heed the advice of a woman who has had four children?"

She leaned over and whispered something in his ear. He lay utterly still for a moment, then sprang to his knees and began to work at a stubborn knot in the drawstring of his hose.

Willow was somewhat unnerved by his sudden burst of enthusiasm. "Of course, I should warn you that Netta said there was only one sure way for a woman to keep from getting with child."

"And that would be?" Bannor gave the hapless drawstring a savage tug that snapped it in two.

As the hose slid from his hips, Willow blushed and turned her face away, suffering a latent pang of shyness. "Swear a vow of chast.i.ty."

Bannor hurled his hose into a far corner and seized Willow's face in the cup of his hands. "I'll leave it up to you, sweeting. Will it be chast.i.ty?" He lowered himself on top of her, settling his weight between her splayed thighs. "Or me?"

"You," Willow whispered, mesmerized by the wicked sparkle in his heavy-lidded eyes.

She was still gazing into those eyes when Bannor buried himself deep inside of her. He had promised to serve her a banquet sweeter than any she had ever known, but he'd failed to warn her it would be so filling. As her body struggled to contain him, a hoa.r.s.e moan-half pleasure and half pain-spilled from her throat. The pain was sharp and fleeting, but the pleasure seemed to go on and on, pulsing in time with each shuddering beat of her heart.

Kissing away the tears that had sprung unbidden to her eyes, Bannor began to glide in and out of her, stroking her honeyed sheath with such paralyzing tenderness that his absence soon became more painful than his presence. He was so much bigger than she was, so much stronger. Yet she sensed he was holding his l.u.s.t in check, much as he had held his bloodl.u.s.t in check when he had feared harming his children.

She clung to his powerful shoulders and turned her head from side to side, gasping for breath. "Bannor, please... oh, sweet heaven, please..."

He mistook her whimper as a plea for freedom. When he began to roll off of her, Willow wrapped her legs around his waist and rolled with him, impaling herself on the full measure of his manhood. Bannor collapsed against the mattress, groaning as if it had been he, and not she, who had been struck the mortal blow.

Willow shook her hair out of her eyes, marveling that she could contain such power and pa.s.sion within her fragile body. Her exultation swelled as she watched the flickers of rapture dance across the rugged beauty of Bannor's features with each rise and fall of her hips. He closed his hands around her waist and arched against her, urging her to take more of him when she would have sworn she'd already taken all she could hold.

Still clutching her waist, he rolled again, imprisoning her beneath him. A thrill of raw delight coursed through her veins as his hips increased their tempo. His tongue swept through her mouth, wordlessly promising that this time he would hold nothing back. He would grant her no mercy and no reprieve until she'd surrendered the last shred of her self-control to his tender mastery.

Willow had no choice but to do just that, as he angled his hips, deliberately rubbing his rigid length against that live ember buried at the crux of her curls. A scarlet haze descended over her eyes as the world burst into flames. As her womb convulsed in an agony of pleasure, Bannor's own ma.s.sive body began to shudder.

Willow could not help but reach for him as he tore himself from her, spilling his seed against the softness of her belly with a mighty roar.

Twenty Seven Sir Hollis was haggling over the price of a barrel of wine with a traveling tinker when his master's roar resounded through the castle. He might not have started so violently, had Bannor not been bellowing his name. Muttering an excuse to escape from the bandy-legged little man, Hollis began to back out of the b.u.t.tery. As soon as he rounded the corner, he forsook the dignity of his position and went flying up the stairs to the north tower, fearing the worst. The last time his lord had summoned him in such an earsplitting manner, he had found Bannor barricaded in the tower, cursing the treaty with France and bemoaning the fact that he was being held hostage by his own offspring.

This time the tower door had been flung wide open, spilling a puddle of golden sunshine onto the landing. As Hollis came stumbling into the chamber, Bannor swung away from the unshuttered window, giving him a bemused look.

"You bellowed, my lord?" Hollis inquired, still gasping for breath.

"There was no need for you to make such haste. The tower wasn't afire, and neither was my beard." Bannor stroked the fresh growth that darkened his jaw.

Feeling a trifle bit foolish, Hollis gave his doublet a tug to straighten it and joined Bannor at the window. "Old habits die hard, my lord. How was I to know I wouldn't find you with a French dagger at your throat or with Mary Margaret bouncing up and down on your chest?"

Bannor chuckled. "Once I would have preferred the former to the latter, but now I'm not so sure."

A gleeful shriek wafted up from the courtyard, making him grin instead of wince. The day was uncommonly cold, but sunny, and after nearly two months of snowfall, relieved only by fitful spells of icy rain, the children had streamed out of the castle like a horde of eager honeybees bursting from their hive.

They were currently engaged in a rousing game of hot c.o.c.kles. When Ennis asked for a new volunteer, Hammish thrust his hand into the air, bouncing up and down in his eagerness to be chosen. After he had donned a coa.r.s.e linen hood, the children took turns. .h.i.tting him over the head and urging him to identify his a.s.sailant. Since their halfhearted blows only made the lad giggle hysterically, they soon grew winded and bored.

'Twas Desmond who suggested a round of hood-man blind. A reluctant Bea was coaxed into being the first one to wear the hood this time. Blinded by its thick folds, she groped at the air while the rest of the children danced just out of her reach.

Bannor shook his head. "I still don't understand why Willow favors that little maidservant of hers. I've yet to see the wench do an honest lick of work."

As they watched, Desmond seized one of the fat flaxen braids protruding from beneath the hood and gave it a playful yank.

Bea s.n.a.t.c.hed off the hood and whirled on him, her blue eyes pools of outrage. As he sprinted out of the bailey, casting a taunt over his shoulder, she s.n.a.t.c.hed up her skirts and gave chase. With her braids flying out behind her, she looked like the little girl she was, instead of the woman she pretended to be.

"As long as the lad's legs are getting, she'll never catch him," Hollis predicted.

"Oh, she'll catch him," Bannor said, a wry grin playing around his mouth. "He'll see to that, I'll wager."

While Bannor watched them pelt through the list and disappear into the barn, Hollis's gaze was drawn to an iron gate in the far corner of the bailey. A woman had just emerged from the herb garden with chubby little Peg balanced on her hip. The baby's questing fingers tangled in the tidy bun at her nape, causing her thick mane of honey brown hair to come tumbling around her shoulders. Instead of scolding the babe, she pressed a kiss to its rosy cheek, a smile transforming her own rawboned features.

Bannor followed the direction of Hollis's gaze. "She is a handsome woman, is she not?"

"And a stubborn one," Hollis said, refusing to acknowledge the speculative look Bannor slanted him.

"As well I know. In the beginning, she refused Willow's invitation to come live at the castle and help Fiona care for the children. She didn't relent until I threatened to marry her off to the first man who would take her."

Hollis prayed he wasn't blushing. "Fiona was a bit jealous at first, was she not, to have another cat sniffing around her litter?"

Bannor shrugged. "She sulked and pouted for a few days, but it didn't take her long to realize Netta was just another lost child for her to mother."

Netta wasn't the only lost child who had come beneath Bannor's protection in the past two months. Thanks to Willow's prodding, young Annie, whose father had threatened to drown her newborn baby in a bucket, had joined the hallowed ranks of the castle maidservants. Her father had also received a personal visit from the lord of the castle. The village gossips swore it had taken the blacksmith over six hours to dislodge the man's fat head from his own privy bucket.

Hollis dragged his gaze away from Netta. "I doubt you summoned me here to admire your children or their new nursemaid, however fair."

Bannor clamped a hand on his shoulder and steered him toward the table. "You're quite right, Hollis. 'Tis your keen wits I have need of. I want you to help me plot the most important campaign of my career."

Once, Hollis might have felt a thrill of excitement at Bannor's words. Now he felt only dismay. The solitary life of a soldier no longer held the attraction for him that it once did. "Have you received word from the king? Has the peace faltered? Are we to join him in France? If he has summoned you to his side, perhaps 'twould be best if I linger here at Elsinore. After all, someone needs to tend to the castle and all of its business. I should hate to see it fall into disarray and neglect again."

Unfazed by his steward's feverish urgency, Bannor propelled him into a chair. "I don't want you to help me make war, my friend, but to make merry."

"Merry?" Hollis repeated, hardly able to comprehend the word when it was all he could do not to bang his head upon the table in despair.

"Aye. I want you to help me plan a wedding. A wedding the likes of which Elsinore has never seen before and will never see again." A tender smile curved Bannor's lips. "I want to marry Willow."

Hollis shook his head, baffled. "But you've already married Willow. I should know. I was there."

"Precisely. But I wasn't. This time, I want to stand before the priest myself and make my vows. I want to endow her with all my worldly goods." Bannor's voice and his gaze softened as he glanced toward the bed that stayed rumpled more often than not, now that Willow was sharing it with him. "I want to promise to worship her with my body."

"A task you've no doubt already been giving your most pious attention."

Ignoring Hollis's smirk, Bannor shoved a crisp sheet of parchment at him. "We shall begin by penning an invitation to her family."

Hollis's amus.e.m.e.nt quickly shifted to disbelief. "Have you taken leave of your senses, my lord? She was naught to them but a piece of chattel, to be bartered away to the highest bidder."

Bannor's face darkened. "That's precisely why I want them here to witness her triumph. Why I intend to make them grovel at her feet, as I take her to be my bride with all of the splendor and honor she deserves. Why, I can hardly wait to see the astonishment on her face when they arrive to pay homage to her."

Hollis swallowed. "Willow does not know of this invitation?"

Bannor looked nonplussed by the very suggestion. "Of course not. I want it to be a surprise. Just as the wedding itself will be."

Hollis nearly groaned aloud. "Do you really believe 'tis wise to stage a wedding without the bride's sanction?"

"What protest could she possibly have? We've been living as man and wife for over three months."

"I doubt that Willow will have any objections to having your union blessed twice. But it has been my personal experience that women prefer to believe they have a say in such matters, whether they do or not."

Bannor waved away his counsel. "No offense, my friend, but Willow has taught me more about women than I'd previously learned in my entire thirty-two years. Oh, I knew all there was to know about pleasuring a woman, but very little about pleasing one. I knew they were tender of flesh, but not so very tender of heart." A shadow of regret pa.s.sed over his face. "If I had, I might have been a far better husband to Mary and Margaret."

"From what I witnessed, my lord, those two n.o.ble ladies, G.o.d rest their souls, had few complaints."

Bannor flashed him a grateful smile. "If I have anything to say about it, Willow will have none."

Hollis chuckled. "It does my heart good to see you behaving like a love-struck swain."

Bannor's smile faded. "Don't be ridiculous," he said stiffly. "I'm no love-struck swain, simply a man who appreciates the value of a good wife."

"And a good sword. And a good saddle. And a good piece of horseflesh," Hollis could not resist adding.